I work in IT too, I have seen a lot of piracy of software music, photo's and just about everything in between. A lot is due to convenience, a lot is a justificational and rational for the extremely high cost of software. Take Microsoft for example, they charge out the wazoo for their office product then charge for support, they tell you the cost is due to research and development while much of this may be true a lot is hogwash. Microsoft like so many others is having a hard time convincing users the cost of R&D is so hign when they are oposting multibillion dollar profit margins, making upper echelon employees millionaires and a few stock holders. People don't mind pirating from a corporation like MS. Then you have RIAA, the recording industry's watch dog going after children and a lot of people who don't even realize they might be breaking the law. Last I heard RIAA has come out and said that downloading music off of a CD you legally purchased to your Ipod or other music player is also illegal and a violation of copyright laws. While corporate America and copyright holders do have rights to do as they choose with their creations the industry watch dogs and obscene profits the corporations are making drive consumers into the rational of justifying their piracy. For photographers, we can at least stamp our works with warings or deterrents. I tend to believe that if they reduced cost to reasonable levels making the items more affordable and unlike MS more reliable then the general public would beless inclined to pirate as in the case of shareware and freeware. There are was the industry can protect itself, try to buy a 14K gold Elvis Presley TCB necklace anywhere and you won't find a dealer/distributor selling it. You can only get it at Graceland and it will be a special order item. As for the double standard, it is a double standard but then, if you buy a software item and it is full of bug who then is creating the double standard. Microsoft posts patches and updates on an almost daily basis, should their update cause a crash and it will cost you 250.00 up front for them to assist you and most of those cases are generally soved by the IT network admin calling in to get help. Over charging for buggy products generates anomosity and piracy, who want to pay 500.00 for a program that will most likely crash on them. It's not a matter of if it will crash but when will it crash because it will. I know it sounds like i am picking on MS... I am, I work with it daily but UNIX and Linux are about as bad. One last word, when was the last time you updated your camera's firmware? Did it have to be updated? If it did was it because on a known issue a bug or some other reason or is your camera perfect and will never need an update because it is impervious to faults.
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