Piracy 101
by Chris Rogers
July 14th, 2000

Piracy has to be one of the computer industry's most infamous villains. Though piracy to the user may seem pretty cool, pirates are doing more harm than you think. If you don't know what software piracy is let me fill you in, it's stupid. Seriously though, piracy is using software for which you do not have a valid license. So if you have a copy of Adobe Photoshop 5.5 on your computer that you never bought, or just downloaded from the net, I'M TALKING TO YOU!!!!!

Yeah, it seems really cool to have some pirated software on your computer but you are doing some major damage to the platform that you love and cherish. Take games, for instance. With the Mac market being so much smaller than the PC market, every sale counts. A hit game on the PC side will sell in excess of 1 million copies on the low side, and many millions on the high side. A hit game on the Mac will hopefully top 75,000 units. That's a big difference. Developing and publishing games takes lots of money, far more than you probably realize, and on the Mac side every single sale counts! When you go and download a copy of Unreal Tournament from some warez site, you are giving game publishers one more reason not to bring over their next game to our platform. For those of you who are kind of PO'd that it took Starship Titanic so long to come out for the Mac, or that Tribes never came to the Mac, blame it on your crew.

I know that some people just can't seem to afford software but stealing your copies makes this problem even worse. If sales for the Mac market were as good as they should be, game publishers might be able to sell a game for US$30-US$40 instead of US$40-US$50. Believe me when you step back and take a look at the numbers everything fits in. Software prices are high because these people need to make money off of their hard labor. When you download a program instead of buying it, companies have to up their prices to keep up with R&D as well as distribution. So you who think you are so cool for having illegal software, you are nothing more than an idiot. You are causing more problems than you think. Also, those of you who just needed to download a program to help you do "one quick thing," get off your butt and go buy the program you are STILL using for that "one quick thing!"

It's the users that help make the Mac market good. If we behaved like good Mac users should, we could bring many, many more products to the Mac market. Apple's doing all they can to open up development on the Mac platform but the users have to buy the products to make our market appetizing for big brand names. Next time you need to get a program, go buy it!

Just Think!

-Chris-