Is software piracy acceptable? Recently Julian produced a very well reasoned article taking us through content and software piracy. if you haven’t read it please do check it out.
Did You Know About IMSTA?
The International Music Software Trade Association (IMSTA) has released a Lets Talk Piracy survey to help them get a better understanding of the motives behind software piracy. Thanks to Sonnox one of a large number of members of IMSTA for highlighting this survey.
Consider Filling Out The Survey And Be Honest
IMSTA stress that the information they collect from this survey will only be used for research purposes and will NOT be used to take legal action against the survey participants. You don’t need to provide your personal details unless you want to be entered into a raffle. So they ask people to be honest when answering these questions. IMSTA also states that your private information will not be shared with anyone and that only the results of this survey will be published and shared with member companies.
The Sale Of Soundcards Is Outstripping Sales Of Software As Internet Speeds Increase
There is an interesting article on the IMSTA website which although based on an old report published in 2007 shows that although sales of soundcards continue to rise, the increase in sales of software is lagged behind the sales of soundcards and they present a case there there is a direct correlation with the increase of broadband speeds.
The Myths Behind Piracy
Also there is a Myths page on the IMSTA site that are there to discredit the myths that some people use to justify piracy like software companies are huge, and software costs nothing to make, both of which Julian covers in his article on content theft and piracy.
Don’t Blame The Developers
We also covered the area of software protection and piracy in a recent article entitled “Software Protection - Don’t Blame The Developers For Protecting The Future”. In that article which was triggered by a distressing conversation with a small plug-in developer who has a plug-in with only 3% of legitimates users. We recommended that we can all help to make sure that developers both large and small don’t go out of business because of piracy. We suggested that you…
Avoid temptation - try the legitimate demo, if you like it buy it. if you can’t afford it use a free plug-in, there are plenty out there, check out our growing database of great free plug-ins.
Educate others about the real cost - read Julian’s article, read the article about copy protection and piracy, if your are a tutor consider educating your students on the real cost of piracy and why developers have to use copy protection.
Don’t turn a blind eye - By ignoring others using cracked software we give tacit approval. There are two organisations, FACT & IMSTA. We had a poignant story from a community member who was working in education and witnessed tutors using and distributing cracked software to their students. What message does this send out?
Individually we may not be able to do much but together we can have a significant affect.