Zebra is locked?

[rockmachine]

Here's the bigger picture though: Urs lives in Germany so now we have to invoke the relativity argument. His rent and food costs are first world costs, so I don't know why it's his issue that someone in Poland, or anywhere else in the world, that they only make "X" amount per month. I doubt that people at his supermarket are interested that he's selling software to people in Poland, so are willing to give him a discount on the food. As has been noted ad nauseum here, his software is more than reasonably priced for what it is you get. I buy all of my software and am not even interested in anything stolen because I just assume that good software code takes a long time to write and beta test, so am happy to pay for value. For those that don't have the money, as noted, there's lots of good freeware right here on KVR.

[penguinfromdeep]

Urs lives in Berlin and it's supercheap though compared to other european capitals.. Believe me, supercheap compared to Paris etc for example!! I live here and it's ridiculous with how little money you can survive, unless you do a lot of clubbing that is a temptation in Berlin. Food and rents (depends of course where exactly you live iN Berlin) are cheaaaappp still

[Urs]

Yes to Rockmachine.

And indeed, Berlin is cheap to live in

Note that no-one here defends piracy. SuperNoise just pointed out that the price may be a factor in some countries with lower salaries and lower cost of living. Which I agree to - it may be a main factor for sales to these countries being much lower than the number of users.

Nevertheless, if I wanted to change the world I wouldn't create audio software plugins.

I make a decent living, and though I'm technically a 1-man company, about 8 people (including 1 Google employee, 1 employee at ShareIt and 1 state employee in German tax authorities I'm almost fully paying for) earn a substantial amount of their annual income from sales of u-he software.

[SuperNoise]

Urs is right, he clearly defined 'in other words', what I mean.
I described a kind of phenomena, I can see.

All of you, listed a lot of good arguments against piracy, yes.
I use legal software, I have my own legal Zebra and I'm proud of it.

Please, don't start a discussion about live costs, because in next 5 minutes we will know in details how much is milk in Berlin, London, Warsaw and Moscow
Is it the point?

[IncarnateX]

Urs is right, he clearly defined 'in other words', what I mean.
I described a kind of phenomena, I can see.

All of you, listed a lot of good arguments against piracy, yes.
I use legal software, I have my own legal Zebra and I'm proud of it.

Please, don't start a discussion about live costs, because in next 5 minutes we will know in details how much is milk in Berlin, London, Warsaw and Moscow
Is it the point?

No, but I still wonder what your point was exactly if not an attempt to justify piracy? Want to explain it? No need, I think we all can imagine a lot rationalizations for piracy, amongst them irrational economic motives such as the truly invalid poverty or Robin Hood argument. At the end of the day, piracy is piracy and is not supported by KVR.

[EvilDragon]

Urs lives in Berlin and it's supercheap though compared to other european capitals.. Believe me, supercheap compared to Paris etc for example!! I live here and it's ridiculous with how little money you can survive, unless you do a lot of clubbing that is a temptation in Berlin. Food and rents (depends of course where exactly you live iN Berlin) are cheaaaappp still

I'm interested how cheap exactly.

[penguinfromdeep]

]I'm interested how cheap exactly.

You should move here, it's great .. Cheap wine and cheaper women! Ok joking only, and a very bad joke too Don't get offended Berliners! Well I think the prices are going up here too but it's still relatively cheap as I said ..

[EvilDragon]

I kinda wanted to compare the prices with what I have here.


And my German sucks pretty hard...

[SuperNoise]

No, but I still wonder what your point was exactly if not an attempt to justify piracy? Want to explain it?

The point is that a underground market will exists in east until economical differences is so high. Higher difference, higher underground.

[Shabdahbriah]

... how much is milk in Berlin, London, Warsaw and Moscow?

$2.79 @ 1/2 gallon in (downtown) Seattle.

Doubtless affected by the abundance of angst-riddled vegan 'goth-cows'.

[Slinky Productions]

I'm often amazed by how amazed some people I meet (at gigs and college etc) are by the fact I pay for all my software. I guess because we're as broke and non-profit as each other but I still choose to pay or go without.

Just to add an angle to the discussion: how many of you download or stream movies ?

[IncarnateX]

No, but I still wonder what your point was exactly if not an attempt to justify piracy? Want to explain it?

The point is that a underground market will exists in east until economical differences is so high. Higher difference, higher underground.

So, we are talking about a poverty argument after all? Now it sucked the first time you stated it and it still sucks. You do not NEED money to get your hands on music software. There are 1000+ freeapps at KVR, among them excellent DAWs such as Podium and a lot of quality synths, so even if you are broke, there is no excuse for piracy.

[Slinky Productions]

No, but I still wonder what your point was exactly if not an attempt to justify piracy? Want to explain it?

The point is that a underground market will exists in east until economical differences is so high. Higher difference, higher underground.

So, we are talking about a poverty argument after all? Now it sucked the first time you stated it and it still sucks. You do not NEED money to get your hands on music software. There are 1000+ freeapps at KVR, among them excellent DAWs such as Podium and a lot of quality synths, so even if you are broke, there is no excuse for piracy.

how do you think photoshop became an industry standard ? it was helped by piracy. yep. there. I said it!

[IncarnateX]

how do you think photoshop became an industry standard ? it was helped by piracy. yep. there. I said it!

Yes my Little Robin Red Hood, I do not doubt that you think this is a fact. It would probably never have been invented without pirates, right?

Honest companies with good product do not need pirates for anything. Just good PR. They should try KVR if they are into music software.

Besides, piracy is still illegal even if at least 5% of the pirate-cliches were true, but more importantly and against the developers will and they have every right to implement thievery-protection into their software

[sauli]

Even if it would be justified they don't remember that most of their customers are ex-warez users and every warez user is a potential customer..

Speak for yourself, loser, and not on the behalf of most VSTi customers.

I don't know a single computer musician in person who wasn't (or isn't) a warez user.

Really? Obviously you do not know enough computer musicians then, or you mingle with the wrong persons.

To the theif everyone is a thief!

Go figure!

How very mature.

What I pointed out was my personal experience and it's of course somewhat biased assumption, but very valid none the less. The environment where I grew up was very pro-warez. Everyone copied everything to their friends, heck even some teachers copied their favourite software to 10 year old kids they teached. Everyone knew someone who had access to some warez bbs or at least someone who knew someone who knew someone and so on... People didn't consider copying software or music wrong and I guess it's not much better nowadays. Youngsters parents were just happy that all the money didn't went to software - computers were so darn expensive using them better be free

Those kids grew up and many of them continue using pirated software and getting it had become much easier, since you didn't need any contacts anymore. Whatever computer related hobby they picked they most probably started with warez. Was it programming, music, 3d or 2d art you were very likely to use at least some pirated software.

And the peer pressure is imo the funniest thing - Many times I've been in a situation where I've had to defend using legit copy. Using pirate is considered normal and spending hundreds of euros for something you could get free is considered weird habit, unless you are doing so for business reasons.

Might be different with older people who didn't start as computer enthusiasist, but musicians using hardware and later switched to software.

No matter how anti-warez you are the fact is that those ex-warez users and warez users are your customers nowadays. Many of them have grown up in environment where warez is considered a good thing. Denying it doesn't help anything.