Reply To: Piracy good or bad

Bravo!

Piracy is one of those “elephants in the room” we keep hearing about.

I have to say I respect Adobe for keeping pretty quiet about piracy, because almost anything they could say would sound hypocritical. On the one hand, they lose to crooked big-shots who make a profit out of using illegitimate software. On the other hand, they gain from having an army of up-and-coming, small-scale, lateral-thinking experimenters who cannot afford the legitimate version (unemployed, non-students, unaffiliated learners, etc.).

Every business is well aware of the marketing potential of a “loss leader”, and I'd be amazed if Adobe were the only business in the world that had somehow not awakened to its potential… But piracy is a loss leader of doubtful legal status, so Adobe can't actively promote it.

All the same, it is fascinating and exciting to live in such interesting times, isn't it?