everyone is a pirate in some way or another.. judge not less ye be judged

The question of ripping is also not really a black an white issue in my eyes. What about music that uses samples? No matter what the source, if the artist has put their input on it in some manner, then it is a unique work. Where do you draw the line? If something is inspired by the shape of a car, is it a rip from the person who designed the car? Obviously it wouldn't be considered so, but it is hard to decide where to draw the line between plagiarization of someone elses work, and where it is modified to the point where it is a unique work in its own right.

AJC

"The law also says speeding is wrong. Yet it isn't treated the same way as a planned murder." by Griffinme

Punishment depends on the serverity of the crime. I would say murder is *way* more wrong than speeding. Might just be me tho...

Someone claiming authorship of my skin isn't taking food off my table. Someone warezing my softare or having it on Kazah or whatever IS taking food off my table. And don't start on the "if they woudln't have bought it anyway..." because SOME of them would so the point still stands.

I think ripping is very bad. But I think stealing software is equally as bad.

Anyone uploading their skins made with a pirated version of Photoshop should not be frothing at the mouth demanding blood of someone who claims ownership of some wallpaper. Saying that it's wrong is fine - because it is. But the high and mighty attitude I've seen by some of the same people who don't think the copyright of software developers matter is what gets me.

Speeding and Murder are equally 'bad', as both fly in the face of socially applied/designed 'rules'.
Both are an attack on society and its sensibilities.
The immediate 'results' may be 'different', but there is always the concept that, for example, the 'murder' affects one person directly, and his family and friends indirectly, but the 'speeding' has the potential to do all of that on perhaps a wider scale, if it results in a collision/death/etc....

I believe that there are many different levels of sin/evil/whatever. I think most people believe that murder is certainly vastly worse than speeding.

My quip is that sure, artists think that ripping is the end of the world but sometimes don't see why software developer see the theft of their work as a pretty darn big deal too and that the two are related - not taking intellectual property rights seriously.

Here’s a question that I think is a grey area....I have purchased Object Desktop and I run it on my home PC; all nice and legal. Now, my work has decided to bestow upon me a nice new PC with Windows 2k install and I was considering using WindowBlinds/Object Desktop on it, as I have gotten used to all the excellent skins that are available (sure beats the ‘classic’ look). The question is: since I have bought Object Desktop is it legal to install it on another PC that I use? Or does that need a separate licence?

R.T.F.L
Read the flippin' licence Oh, that was the bit with the next button/I agree button on. I don't read them, I'm pretty sure most of us don't either.

Well for me, "if" I reg'ed something, and I have 5 machines plus two at work, and I feel like putting it on all 7 as long as they are "MINE" no way I'm reg'ing 7 times...
if you do otherwise you must love to waste your hard earned money

hey tandis, long time no see

well, a bevy of interesting points and counterpoints here. yes, i agree that stealing a copy of something and plagiarizing something are two very different things. they are just both bad, as others above have said whether an individual sees one or the other as worse must depend on the specific occurance. plagarizing a term paper or a free skin or some other non-profit item is far inferior to, for example, the doors changing a kinks song a little and recording it as their own. the difference is in the millions they are still both wrong though.

there is also a difference in severity [moral, not legal] between stealing a copy of wb and stealing a copy of photoshop. that copy of wb can make quite a difference to a small developer. adobe makes the vast majority of their lucre from corporate accounts, on the other hand. but make no mistake, they are both wrong.

mig can you answer Woodbridge's question? is that considered right to have one reg copy and install on several machines? I mean as long as they are all your machines why would you need an additional license? I'm curious myself about what dev's actually expect?

I know I won't reg anything twice, once is more then enough for me...

or what, do they actually expect you to pay maybe a smaller license fee for your additional machines? how does that work?

I think Stardock's policy on such a case is that you can't run Object Desktop's software AT THE SAME TIME. Meaning that unless you can duplicate yourself and be both at home and at the office at the same time, then it's fine. In other words, if both computers are yours it's fine, but if it's your spouse or kid's, then you should buy a second copy.
Fortunately for me, my wife isn't interested in skinning and my sons are too young yet (although my 3 year old does have his own PC)

If you have 7 machines you can install it 7 times. But you can't have all 7 copies in use by various people. It's like a book.

A few years ago I purchased a software program over the net, which cost $200, a fair bit. I downloaded it and installed it. when I was forced to reformat I found I could not use it again. I contacted the firm and they said that they were trying to prevent piracy. After several long distance calls and emails they finally sent me a copy of it on CD. But guess what..they didn't give me the CD Key #. After many more calls, I never got the reg from them. I ended up obtaining a crack from a warez site so that I could use an expensive program that I had purchased. Oh yeah, the program was an ocr program called TypeReader.

Careful, Frogboy, about simply equating piracy with the loss of food on a software developer's table. In your case, a pirated copies likely represents a lost sale, since Stardock's wares (at least the desktop wares) are modestly priced, so whoever pirates them probably both could afford the software and be willing to pay for a legit copy if that were the only way they could get it.

For professionally priced software like Photoshop, things gets dicey and weird. Most of those who pirate Photoshop can't afford it, so a pirated copy can't necessarily translate into a lost sale for Adobe. There is possible harm to Adobe even in such a case, because the presence of successful piraters of Adobe's stuff might encourage someone who can afford the asking price to freeload off Adobe. More likely, though, this sort of piracy is benign, since someone moving from hobby into professional work would move from using illegit copies to legit ones. To compound the strangeness, such copying of Photoshop is only benign so long as it's illegal, since without the law, there would be little incentive to eventually buy a legal copy.

This is why calling piracy stealing is a strained metaphor. Better to call it freeloading: just as unflattering, but more accurate.

Ramsey has a point. If one has used a freeware app, say something called Painter-X (which could be pretty good) for more than two years. Then S/he'd get a job as an artist. Would he more probably choose some "photoshop" that he has but heard before, or the same freeware "Painter-X" (which might cost something to be used commerically) that he has used for years.

I think that Microsoft actually _gained_ more money a few years back when they had the policy that users that used "Office" at work could bring a copy home. Then, when they moved to another job and if that place didn't have Office, their bosses are more willing to buy a piece of software that the employee can actually use and be productive, than to resort to some cheaper option which would require training.

just my opininon.

\Nite - "can't rain all the time"

(btw, hopefully WC2.0 has the option to store a signature in the userprofile, its tiresome to write it every time

Hum... It is food for thoughts indeed.
Because it is proven that there is such a thing as sheep behaviors: the more people have something, the more they talk about it and get still more people to use it too. That's how Windows got to be so popular.
So, lets think... Since programs such as Office or Photoshop are so expensive, isn't warez actually helping Adobe and Microsoft since it makes their software even more widespread for everybody to use...
Lets think so more... I use my copy of Photoshop from work. Now that I know how to use Photoshop I could not even consider using anything else. I tried Corel and Fireworks, and although they seem nice, I just can't get use to it. Now, every time I am asked to refer a program, I always recommend Photoshop, and if I was to start my company and needed to buy a software, I would buy Photoshop, not Fireworks or Corel.
But if I would not have been able to get a copy of Photoshop, I would have had to use something I can afford, such as Corel or Fireworks. And maybe now I would be used to those software and they would be the ones I recommend and the ones I would buy when I get my company started...

Hum... alright. I was just thinking aloud.

"Everybody uses it, so it has to be good, right?"

Thing with these graphic apps is that they are highly specialised. It takes time to master them, so you're not too inclined to switch --> so you recommend the app you use yourself.

The problem with copies of WB is that you are not likely to use it in a professional way that you would with Office or Photoshop. While it might help with sheep mentality of "everybody on this newsgroup uses it, I should too". Which might help to boast sales it is also a possible way to get a bad name. Copied versions don't get updates and bug fixes that people complain about. This could lead to "I tried it and it sucked!" when they used version 1.5 and the current version is 3.4 and most of the issues that were seen in 1.5 have been fixed.

Moral of the story..... never fix all the bugs so users always will need an update.

http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1500&a=25817,00.asp

A related article I thought might be interesting.
It seems that music sales have dropped by 40% since the death of Napster.

Guys, bear in mind that to many people, ripping seems a lot more petty of a thing to get upset about than piracy. When someone pirates WindowBlinds, what's their excuse? It's $20.

The people who get hysterical about ripping in that thread are probably (some of them) pirating music and software and see that as no big deal. To artists, ripping is a pretty big deal. To us developers, ripping off our software is a big deal. Hence the double standard Eric was referring to.

Yeah, but you usually don't run into the dev and the dev doesn't see you pirating. In that sense this little niche of ours is a bit strange.

Deep down you know that everything is monitored by the NSA anyway...

Frogboy's on to us, release the poison gas.