Reply To: Piracy good or bad

… if you write a book, and I dishonestly present myself as the author of what you wrote, that's much worse. You yourself were the victim of a really awful example of that sort of piracy (of your excellent InDesign Object Reference). Action should be taken against that sort of thing, and I think it probably could be more effectively taken if stop pretending it's exactly same thing as theft, that's all.

Now that's an excellent example. Yup — I was, uh, displeased, to say the least. But I had my sweet revenge! First off, after a month or so of sullen musings, I retaliated by releasing a new version even better than it was before. Second, I made sure to make such a public Big Stink that anyone googling is sure to come across one of my posts discrediting that “pirated” version :)

Debating pricing, on the other hand, is far more tricky. Of course we can only presume Adobe calculates a fair price for their products — after all, you don't know neither the initial investment, nor the expected long term return rate. And it's anyone's guess how much better you would be off with a cheaper product (that includes “free” open source software; sure it's “free” but my experience is it usually comes with a hefty price in the form of unexpected problems).

My boss paid for InDesign; not once, but for all of our 4 or 5 active computers, and not once, but ever since (I think) InDesign v.2, chugging through update after update. Now some people elect to use pirated versions, because “they cannot afford it” — and, because they don't have the purchase expenses, they can produce the same quality of product as I do, but at a lower price. I cannot advise my boss to downgrade to a cheaper package with a clear conscience, and if we want to achieve the same price levels as these pirates, we might as well torrent the next ID as well!

And rather than investing in newer computers, we're gonna get ourselves a hefty brick and wait outside the Apple store until the lights go out. That'll save some pennies too.