Illegal...

[Chatty]

Have you ever by pirate CD / DVD / Computer software?

I'm the one of people in Thailand who like the buy them.

Lastnight, I went to fortune town to buy some computer softwares. I heard the vendors talked about their business. They said it was hard to do this kind of business nowaday. They had to pay for the police men who visited their shops almost everyday. The everage they pay for the guys was around 9000 baht / month / shop.

Once I was buying pirate CD at some CD shop there... a police man in full police uniform was standing behind me... I saw him after I paid and got CDs in my hand.... gosh!! I thought my heart was falling down... but he just came in to take 2 CDs without paying anything (may be he paid it before)

1. I know piracy is a crime but I wanna ask if anyone here buy illegal stuff?

2. If yes, you know it's not good doing that why you keep buy them?

3. Do you think who is more guilty between Police and the Vendors and Buyers?

[sunsnow]

Never bought music or software pirated goods. I have downloaded though, although it does not bring any money to organized criminal gangs or resellers which I think is better option if you decided to brake the law...hmmm

Both are as guilty but guilty of breaking different laws. Polices guilt is morally bigger as police have the duty to uphold the law, instead of breaking it by taking bribes and stopping illegal activities.

[MisterMatlock]

Never bought music or software pirated goods. I have downloaded though, although it does not bring any money to organized criminal gangs or resellers which I think is better option if you decided to brake the law...hmmm

I have never, never bought music, computer software, computer games... legaly. All downloaded or pirate stuff. yes Im a criminal, arest me-but then again I do not think my friends bought anny of that stuff either.

But why sould we bought something that you can get for free?

You'd probably change your mind if you were in the position of a "developer"... I can't say I'm innocent though since buying XBox 360 games is quite expensive... ALTHOUGH, I DO buy REAL PC games...

[MisterMatlock]

Tell you something, when SONY or MICROSOFT or FRANKIE MAY or FREDDIE MIGHT or whatevever loaded corporation posts 3rd quarter losses on X milliions after 17 consecutive quarterly profits of x billions and expects me to weep tears over it when babies die for the sake of 10 dollars' worth of food aid and people lose their houses but those at the top still live in decadent luxury I really couldn't give a toss.

F*ck the lot of em.

I tend to agree... But who do those corporations punish? Usually the low-earning guy at the bottom... Hate to agree with Reaganomics, but trickle-down...

[Stramash]

Most games are vastly overpriced and usually have a tonnage too much packaging too.

My ethos is normaly to get something as a pirate version then if I really realy like it, will go out and buy the full price version, but if its **** then they didnt deserve my cash anyway!!! :twisted:

[MisterMatlock]

Most games are vastly overpriced and usually have a tonnage too much packaging too.

My ethos is normaly to get something as a pirate version then if I really realy like it, will go out and buy the full price version, but if its sh*t then they didnt deserve my cash anyway!!! :twisted:

If games are "vastly overpriced", it is certainly your right to NOT purchase them. That's why I don't purchase 360 games. I compare their price versus what I make in salary per month. I find REAL PC games to be MUCH more affordable. PC games seem to be considerably less expensive as the software publishers have discovered that people living in Thailand will buy the "real" games if they're priced much more in-line with salaries made by the locals. If 360 games were more "affordable", I'd be buying the real versions of those too...

[friendlyCat]

I am in the USA now. I can buy legit software at competitive prices, and I think that if you use the support just once to help you load or problem solve a software issue, it has paid for itself many times over. I think that companies here should have a different price structure to sell to underdeveloped countries so that the temptation to go to pirated would be less.

There is a big issue with China selling copycat goods of all kinds. I think that as China develops its own brand names, they will curtail this activity as it will be Chinese policing their own pocketbooks.

BTW, the IPhone here that sells for $200 is only as part of a 2 year contract with ATT. In reality the buyers are paying $500-$700 for an Iphone.

[dannyboy]

Bugger...

[zeusbheld]

You'd probably change your mind if you were in the position of a "developer"... I can't say I'm innocent though since buying XBox 360 games is quite expensive... ALTHOUGH, I DO buy REAL PC games...

I. DVDs

well, i can't speak for developers but i can speak as someone who works in movies/on movies from time to time and knows a few movie people..

i probably have more bootleg DVDs than most DVD shops in Pantip. if something is so important that i'll watch it over and over i tend to buy a 'legit' copy, typically from Amazon. in new york i'd just rent DVDs from kim's (best video shop on the planet), i don't have any other options here really. for most of the movies i'm interested in, the ONLY way i'll see them over here is on bootleg dvd.

also, over the last few years, if i see a bootleg movie made by people i know i buy it and send it to them. so far no one has been 'outraged' or anything to find out their film has been bootlegged and most are just happy someone might be watching it. of course most of them are small indies who aren't making all that much money on their films, but Anthony Bregman (the producer) got a kick out of the bootleg of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind i gave him.

2. MUSIC

the music industry had the chance to adapt to customer preferences around the time of Napster--they could have reached a very favorable agreement for making Napster still p2p, yet sharing profits with the record labels. the greedy short-sighted bastards opted to try to force consumers to buy CDs instead. they deserve their declining profits. and strangely, people are still making music. artists are divided on the evils of music sharing

incidentally, well over half of my massive music collection was ripped from my own CDs, which i then turned around and sold. at a used CD shop. while i still probably have a couple dozen gigs of out of print records stolen from Napster, most of my mp3s are copied from friends, which would be perfectly legal--IF my friends' copies are legit (which they probably aren't, knowing those dodgy fuckers).

incidentally i am quite frustrated with legit downloaded music as all the copyguarding features work extremely well... if their intended purpose is to make legit downloads a pain in the ass to use. i am so ******* tired of "authorizing a computer" for my ******* MP3s.

that said, i'd prefer to pay money for the stuff i actually listen to often, but the music industry has got to find a business model that works for consumers---or perish, which i wouldn't mind. they had a chance at a business model that would have gotten them more money in the long run, but they smugly assumed consumers would keep buying CDs on their say-so. if they die off, **** 'em. the artists will still get their stuff out.

3. SOFTWARE

probably the trickiest of the lot in terms of impact on the industry. almost all the software i use is MIcrosoft, Adobe, and Apple. i will never give those cocksuckers at Microsoft or Adobe another dollar of mine, because of a) their anticompetitive business practices and the price. i will soon purchase a bootleg copy of the Apple OS; a) they make more than enough money from me in hardware purchases, and their business is still set up so that their software is about pimping their hardware, and there is no legit version of apple OS that runs on a windows machine, and i intend to install it on a windows machine.

i have fair numbers of little utilities and small programs from small publishers, and i always pay the litte guy and download a legit copy. mostly shareware, but some commercial software.

some of the copyguarding for software, i might add, is (literally) enough to drive me to buy bootlegs. i own a legit license for Final Draft, and they keep asking me to "authorize" the goddamn software. you have to be online in order to do so. if you're not, doesn't matter if you have a legit serial number, you're f**ked and can't work. so even though i already paid for a legit license i bought a bootleg just to save the hassle. i'll think twice about buying an upgrade, although i'm stuck with their software since everyone *else* in the industry uses it.

4. GAMES.

i buy bootleg computer games once in a while to try them, but i only buy games legit *if* i know i'll actually play them. 99 percent of the time i am playing Football Manager anyway, i tried out a bootleg of "Age of Myth" but it bores me so i won't be buying it legit. i like strategy games better than video games and many interesting games are available legit as downloads--and not available at all in places like pantip. i don't have much choice for games.

i have a ps2 and ALL my games are bootlegs, but i have hardly ever used the damn thing, my infatuation with gaming consoles is short-lived. there are a couple of games i probably *should* buy coz i played 'em a lot--Kessen, Dynasty Warriors and Pro EVolution Football---but i doubt i will as i don't play 'em anymore. i might get a wii, though, and if i like it, the stuff i know i'll use, i'll buy legit, same as everything.

BOTTOM LINE: it can be said that bootlegs are stealing, but how serious a crime stealing is, in my book, is a question of degree. i think everyone has to navigate the ethics of this on their own, there's no one-size-fits-all moral option.

speaking for myself, i'm not worried about it, as i have only two morals: 1. do no harm through violence, 2."To defy the authority of empirical evidence is to disqualify oneself as someone worthy of critical engagement in a dialog." (the Dalai Lama said it best.)

[Mazzy]

Because some people (companies) are rich, you feel justified in stealing from them? because they have more than U?

Complaining because they are rich and dont give enough?

Isn't that socialism?

And what if it was? BTW, to my knowledge socialism doesn't involve any "complaining" it's a political current not a therapy support group.

[Stu_thailand]

Tell you something, when SONY or MICROSOFT or FRANKIE MAY or FREDDIE MIGHT or whatevever loaded corporation posts 3rd quarter losses on X milliions after 17 consecutive quarterly profits of x billions and expects me to weep tears over it when babies die for the sake of 10 dollars' worth of food aid and people lose their houses but those at the top still live in decadent luxury I really couldn't give a toss.

F*ck the lot of em.

Yep, exactly. I have NO scruples AT ALL about buying copied stuff. After all the years of being ripped off before technology allowed us to do this, as you say, **** em.

[Mazzy]

Because some people (companies) are rich, you feel justified in stealing from them? because they have more than U?

Complaining because they are rich and dont give enough?

Isn't that socialism?

And what if it was? BTW, to my knowledge socialism doesn't involve any "complaining" it's a political current not a therapy support group.

The first sentence refers to the socialism question, not the second...

Wrong again, that would be Robin Hood .

[zeusbheld]

Because some people (companies) are rich, you feel justified in stealing from them? because they have more than U?

Complaining because they are rich and dont give enough?

Isn't that socialism?

And what if it was? BTW, to my knowledge socialism doesn't involve any "complaining" it's a political current not a therapy support group.

The first sentence refers to the socialism question, not the second...

Wrong again, that would be Robin Hood .

Wrong again,

you mean a robbing hood!

are you not familiar with the 'robin hood' story? robin hood WAS robbing hood, at least in pop culture....

[dannyboy]

As a quick sidenote, that statue is about half a mile from my house. It's placed just outside the walls of Nottingham castle...

Fact or fiction, who knows?

[zeusbheld]

As a quick sidenote, that statue is about half a mile from my house. It's placed just outside the walls of Nottingham castle...

Fact or fiction, who knows?

seems largely fiction from what little i know, but there are a number of historical figures who have been proposed as the prototype for the Robin Hood story.

as semi-mythical histrical figures go i tend to stick closer to home in my reading (Custer for example) so i can't even recommend a good history-oriented book on the robin hood story. if anyone's read one i'd be interested...

[zeusbheld]

are you not familiar with the 'robin hood' story? robin hood WAS robbing hood, at least in pop culture....

Huh?

Robin Hood was the guy who, as legend goes, robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.

[PJack]

are you not familiar with the 'robin hood' story? robin hood WAS robbing hood, at least in pop culture....

Huh?

Robin Hood was the guy who, as legend goes, robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.

unless..... it was a pun, in which case it is best left unexplained.

[Chatty]

Because some people (companies) are rich, you feel justified in stealing from them? because they have more than U?

Nope, that's not the reason why I buy those illegal stuff. I just can't afford it.

My whole month salary isn't enough to buy a software from Adobe but I have to use it for survival.

Yeah, it's a stupid excuse. The best I could do I just force my company to buy genuine ones, but for myself for my own computer... 100 baht / CD 200 baht / DVD without boxes...

About movie... mostly I always see movie in the cinema.... but I buy some for collections. I think I paid for cinema already.

[Niranahm]

Nope, that's not the reason why I buy those illegal stuff. I just can't afford it.

My whole month salary isn't enough to buy a software from Adobe but I have to use it for survival.

Are you sure there isn't an open source alternative?

If you need to use Adobe Photoshop, then try Paint.net (easy, and like Photoshop. PSD plugin available) or the TheGimp (more powerful but strange interface.

If you need to make PDFs, use Cute PDF or Open Office (which is a good alternative to Microsoft Office)

For page layout, consider Scribus.

The most usual reason people NEED to use paid software is compatibility with proprietary formats. Open source can handle graphic formats and MS Office formats well enough, but page layout formats remain a challenge.

It's shame that there isn't more effort put into popularizing open source alternatives and making Thai versions of them, as compared to trying to raid companies and enforce licensing that doesn't make economic sense in Thailand.

I recently asked a Microsoft executive here if he personally thought it was correct to charge Thais the same amount as Americans for software. After a few lame excuses, he admitted there was "more to be done" in this area.

If people start moving to open source and if the Thai government promoted, software companies will start to negotiate special Thai pricing for Thai versions...

[Niranahm]

An analysis of software pricing over the years shows that generally it follows the same economic fundamentals as other goods.

The price of most productivity applications has come down over the years as more and more people use them. The exception is MS Office, which has only ever increased in price, despite the fact that very few people buy new versions for their new features (usually it's compatibility). That's because MS Office has a monopoly which it protects through the use of proprietary formats. There are lots of great XML based standards such as ODT but so long as people think that .DOC is the way to exchange content, and MS keeps it as a closed and ever changing format, then no competitor can make a dent regardless of features.

The solution is simple: governments should promote Open Office in schools and in Civil Service. The EU has just done this and has made Open Office formats its default format. But developing countries like Thailand have far more to gain.

[zeusbheld]

An analysis of software pricing over the years shows that generally it follows the same economic fundamentals as other goods.

The price of most productivity applications has come down over the years as more and more people use them. The exception is MS Office, which has only ever increased in price, despite the fact that very few people buy new versions for their new features (usually it's compatibility). That's because MS Office has a monopoly which it protects through the use of proprietary formats. There are lots of great XML based standards such as ODT but so long as people think that .DOC is the way to exchange content, and MS keeps it as a closed and ever changing format, then no competitor can make a dent regardless of features.

The solution is simple: governments should promote Open Office in schools and in Civil Service. The EU has just done this and has made Open Office formats its default format. But developing countries like Thailand have far more to gain.

over recent years adobe seem to be following the MS Office plan.

agree that if education adopts it the next generation of users will too. that's why Final Cut Pro has made so many inroads into the film industry, people come out of school knowing it instead of Avid because Avid treat universities like ****.

[Niranahm]

over recent years adobe seem to be following the MS Office plan.

I'm not a huge fan of Adobe, but in comparison with M$:

* Their pricing has come down in real terms (albeit too expensive for Thailand)

* They have brought out new products (InDesign) and added genuinely useful features as opposed to eye candy and bloat

* They do okay on supporting standards like XML

* They have bundled pricing for Thai companies, still expensive but not outrageously so

In the world of audio and video there is reasonable choice in terms of costs and functions. You get what you pay for, but you're not always excluded if you don't have the high end software. In Desktop publishing it may be a requirement to deliver work in a proprietary format and DTP format are binary, closed, and keep changing -- making it very difficult to create open source filters

[Niranahm]

Ok I'm convinced.

I was planning on binning the really crappy and buggy icon based Office 2007, reverting to 2003 and to hell with the expense (haha), but I've decided to download OpenOffice instead.

Here's a link in case anyone else fancies it.

http://download.openoffice.org/?intcmp=1480

(I'll let you know how it works out.)

I have used Open Office 2 for a year while the rest of my company uses MS Office. I only found occasional incompatibilities which didn't cause more than minor annoyance.

Word/Writer are pretty well compatible and I didn't find any issues working on PowerPoint presentations (if you used the very fancy features, some would, but Office users could always open my files fine).

Calc works perfectly for pricing templates and annual budgets, but complex Excel files are a long way from being compatible and convertible.

For the typical office productivity tasks, Open Office is excellent, and features like "save as PDF" beat MS Office.

I'm now using the Open Office Beta for 3.0 and this brings nicer menus and support for .docx among many improvements. It's scheduled for release next month and raises the bar again.

I'm now planning to standardize on Open Office throughout my company and just keep a few copies of MS Office around for compatibility testing or occasional production for external parties.

[zeusbheld]

over recent years adobe seem to be following the MS Office plan.

I'm not a huge fan of Adobe, but in comparison with M$:

* Their pricing has come down in real terms (albeit too expensive for Thailand)

* They have brought out new products (InDesign) and added genuinely useful features as opposed to eye candy and bloat

* They do okay on supporting standards like XML

* They have bundled pricing for Thai companies, still expensive but not outrageously so

In the world of audio and video there is reasonable choice in terms of costs and functions. You get what you pay for, but you're not always excluded if you don't have the high end software. In Desktop publishing it may be a requirement to deliver work in a proprietary format and DTP format are binary, closed, and keep changing -- making it very difficult to create open source filters

i've been in and out of the graphics biz for a while and used adobe products since photoshop version 2, i have seen nothing of this 'price coming down in real terms.' i'd go so far to say that now they've locked up market share they're looking to fatten their profit margin.

also they're quite ruthlessly anti-competitive and buy or bully their competitors. worth noting that PDF is their proprietary format, and was intended from the get-go as an anti-competitive swipe at quark.

that said, (unlike microsoft) their new releases tend to be good, they haven't gotten lazy. Indesign is much better than quark, which as become so stagnant as to be irrelevant.

both video and audio are still fairly competitive, but i dread what will come from adobe over the next few years. they're right where microsoft was after they killed off wordperfect.

as for video software Avid have a low-end product that is as good as FCP, but they made the fatal mistake of charging universities HIGHER than normal prices whereas apple tended to partner with universities and even give away FCP licenses to schools. big mistake for Avid.

[Niranahm]

i've been in and out of the graphics biz for a while and used adobe products since photoshop version 2, i have seen nothing of this 'price coming down in real terms.' i'd go so far to say that now they've locked up market share they're looking to fatten their profit margin.

I'm too lazy to research this point, but it used to be that their flagship layout product was around $1000 whereas now you can get a suite of their products for little more than that. When you factor in 15-20 years of inflation, prices are less than half of what you paid in the early nineties. (whereas for Office..)

also they're quite ruthlessly anti-competitive and buy or bully their competitors. worth noting that PDF is their proprietary format, and was intended from the get-go as an anti-competitive swipe at quark.

True, but Quark were so dumb in keeping pricing high, not supporting Unicode/XML until too late, charging $2000 for other language versions (mutually incompatible) and not developing new features

that said, (unlike microsoft) their new releases tend to be good, they haven't gotten lazy. Indesign is much better than quark, which as become so stagnant as to be irrelevant.

Yes and for many people ID replaces both Illustrator and PageMaker

both video and audio are still fairly competitive, but i dread what will come from adobe over the next few years. they're right where microsoft was after they killed off wordperfect.

Microsoft will struggle to keep their margins. It's not just openoffice, there is a move toward open document standards and XML, plus it's not hard to develop filters for DOC.

In graphics, most formats are based on open standards, and even PSD can nowadays be handled by PageStream, GIMP and Paint.net.

In Desktop publishing Adobe has a lock on the main formats and there is nothing on the horizon to change that. There is no open source equivalent of PDF and the development curve is steep on other formats.

So yeah, Adobe has the edge in the screw-the-consumer stakes. You can see it in their pricing for Adobe Exchange for example, which is clearly monopoly pricing. They charge more for these simple tools than most companies can do for a complex productivity app.

as for video software Avid have a low-end product that is as good as FCP, but they made the fatal mistake of charging universities HIGHER than normal prices whereas apple tended to partner with universities and even give away FCP licenses to schools. big mistake for Avid.

Let's be thankful for that mistake as it's opened the doors for the competition!

M$'s cheap and giveway pricing for students and so on is all about protecting their market and hooking people for life to their products