I hear what you're saying man.
But laws and stuff aside, should people who REALLY can't afford buying everything they use, just quit and give up all hopes and dreams and whatever? Is that really a great thing to do?
Sure, I also don't believe one should make money with pirated software, that's just self-explanatory the way I see it. But I also believe there are people who just want to learn for their own sakes, and to take their interest further and deeper but don't have the money for it.
Honestly, morally, I see it as an OK thing to pirate shit and just keep it strictly to yourself for learning purposes and whatever, as long as it's not even near any commercial business what so ever. Sure it's still wrong, but it's not as wrong as stealing someone's purse and beating them while doing it. If every "pirate" hobbyist had to give up everything, music, whatever, just for the sake of money, it would be one hell of a cold world to live in. Is that what we want? Will that make our world a better place?
Edit: Typo! Seriously.
Once more... your personal profits from a piece of equipment are irrelevant. Completely fucking irrelevant. You're taking advantage of others' work without permission. The moral issue isn't whether or not you can take stuff *and make money from it*, it's whether or not you can *take stuff*.
On those who cannot afford expensive plugins... two responses. First, the practical - you have to be fucking godlike for free plugins to be holding you back... so godlike, in fact, that you should have plugin makers begging to be able to give you a check. Utter bullshit. The free stuff is more than a good enough start. Second, the 'quit begging for this to not be a theft issue' response... I've taken the liberty of paraphrasing slightly to show just how absurd this is.
Should people who REALLY can't become an astronaut not be allowed to hijack space shuttles?
Again, it has nothing to do with your personal financial situation, or your ability to profit - IT'S NOT YOURS. It's someone else's hard fucking work. Not only is there no practical reason to need those exact Waves plugins (again, you have to be fucking godlike for the 'imperfections' of the free plugins to be your biggest problem), they're not something you can be justified in just taking.
Well, surely someone who has pirated softwares on his computer and uses them only for his own enjoyment is not as liable as someone who actually profit from said pirated softwares...
Why the FUCK does it even matter what money you're making off something? Think of it from the developer's perspective - unless you've decided to pay them for each record you make, they have absofuckinglutely no reason at all to care. Yeah, it may seem like more of a dick move... but unless you're buying into some even more batshit nonsense earlier in the game it doesn't impact things nearly as much as you'd expect.
'Pirate' hobbyists don't have to give everything up - they just have to give up things they have no rights to. I have absolutely no trouble affording the equipment necessary for my hobbies. I also earn less than minimum wage and pay my own college tuition and personal expenses. This has nothing to do with "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could just do whatthefuckever they wanted even if they weren't Richard Fucking Branson?", and everything to do with basic property rights.
What arguments (legal, moral, or otherwise) can you actually bring forward on this? There's no sense to it whatsoever - in fact, allowing this nonsense leads to such immediate contradictions that we'd spend longer typing and explaining them than finding them on our own. It's touchy-feely "You're not a failure, you can still try your best and nothing can hold you back - not even your own inability to pay your dues to others!" bullshit, not at all grounded in even the most basic understanding of property rights.
It almost makes sense... until you think about it. If you can figure out how I can get away with "Well, I'd never be able to do this otherwise, so I'm just going to break into CERN and see what this plasma does when you shoot puppies at it", let me know.
The world doesn't have a responsibility to accommodate anyone's whims. There are free things out there, and since you're smart enough to figure out that Python beats the fucking fuck out of that Java trash there's no reason why you can't make your own things. That's how I got to where I am (building toys I couldn't buy retail), that's how a lot of other great people got to where they needed to go (you can still find FOH engineers who got started by building a PA), and that's an even better solution to the expensive-plugin problem than theft.
Jeff
I wasn't judging or pointing fingers, or talkin bout someone, I just wanted ask a philosophic (!!!) question. Like the chicken and egg one
