Plugin Piracy Thread

[FracKing]

It’s giving the payment in exposure vibes all over again

Not a perfect example, BTW.

Exposure doesn't guarantee a sale as some photogs are plain bad (but may still inflict sales...).

I'm talking about "guaranteed" sales. Posting an awesome pic a few times in a large PS group and naming the plugin is going to trigger many n00bs that will go for it.

The B and W "thinking" of "All justifications are bad" is sad in these kinds of discussions. It would be more valuable to rate the types of justifications as some are... justified IMHO. Which does not mean I condone it for others -- we run risks...

BTW, as I have no kids I sometimes think of compensating a bunch of companies when I learn I have just 2 days to live...

Try to get a real crack user in here now!

 

[FracKing]

I love the strawman constructed by morally gray people. “Everyone steals, every now and then.”

You are lucky to get away with Chewbacca there. I used some pics of Yoda in a Photoshop joke a few times and the site was asked to remove those! Seems some thieves get away with it...

 

[[Nathan]]

You wanted a topic with everyone agreeing with you who did not even dare to state your initial stance?

No I didnt?

At least I'm honest in claiming I've been "50/50," so to speak

Yeah lets be real thats probably not 50/50 for using legit stuff

Some justifications are better than others. If I can guarantee you as a CEO to make 3 sales because of my hype, you wouldn't offer me something?

No, even if you guaranteed me 10-20 sales of something I wouldn't want you as a customer (ahem, potential customer I guess)
Not only are you doing the piracy, you don't see a problem with it when it fits your moral code. One of your examples is the below... oh so you can steal something but as long as you tell others how good it is they can go and buy it, awesome.

an "ethic crack user" in large groups will talk favorably about a software he loves anytime he can honestly do so -- I feel that is "beyond invaluable" and will help create sales for sure.

I've been on the internet a long time, I've modded game consoles, grew up with piracy etc. I can see the pro's and con's of piracy for sure which is why the topic fascinates me. TV/Movie Piracy has different nuances to audio plugins, video games, admin software etc etc. Obviously all of it is wrong but there's still nuances.

When it comes to audio plugins usually it's someone who can't justify buying something so they'll get a cracked version, they know its wrong. People take many different paths from not really using it, using it all the time, becoming a paid user down the track etc etc. But at the core of it they know using it is wrong.

You've consistently demonstrated that you don't think there's an issue with this because you see a higher purpose or have your own justifications, and that to me is worse than someone using a cracked plugin. If you just had a cracked version of ProQ3 and your justification was "its too expensive"... ok we can start from there. Heres 5 other plugins that work the same, why not support those companies that offer free or $19 options. Use those guilt free get that music made and if you want to invest more money down the line then buy ProQ3 because its the premium awesome plugin. Just cracking it and using it endlessly is indefensible imo.

If you desperately wanted to use Cubase or Studio One but cracking it was the only way... it's not, use Reaper or get those on a sub or buy it. It's 2026 there's always alternates and ways to obtain things.

And look ultimately if you HAVE to use cracked software for whatever reason, its the only way to upskill and get yourself money to move countries or some kind of crazy scenario, then you should at least have the optics to understand its wrong but its the best of a bad situation. I would imagine someone who had to do that wouldnt look back fondly on those times, its simply something they had to do to get by.

 

[[Nathan]]

Not a perfect example, BTW.

Exposure doesn't guarantee a sale as some photogs are plain bad (but may still inflict sales...).

I'm talking about "guaranteed" sales. Posting an awesome pic a few times in a large PS group and naming the plugin is going to trigger many n00bs that will go for it.

Thats pretty much exactly the "we can pay you in exposure" example
Influencer doesn't want to pay for software so they might say to the plugin developer:

I'm talking about "guaranteed" sales. Posting an awesome pic a few times in a large PS group and naming the plugin is going to trigger many n00bs that will go for it.

 

[ian_dissonance]

So are you also pleading that perfectly ok purchased items should not be returnable...?
I would!

I guess it's more reasonable in countries where many are not close to a shop, but still.

If you buy something and it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to for whatever reason, return it. What you’re saying is “I should be able to take the TV home and try it out. I might use it 25 hours this week, I might use it 25 hours in the next two years, either way I’d like to make the decision to buy it or not after I’ve put 50 hours on it to know I really like it. It’s also possible it might sit in my basement forever and I’ll just not pay for it ever because I only used it for 46 hours. BUT, I’ll tell people about it and even though I’m nobody with no reach, you might sell a couple more so it’s fine if I just keep it.” If we’re comparing it to an off-the-shelf consumer product as you’ve laid out, anyways.
Wait I forgot the “Oh yeah, and someone else is going to pick it up off the truck and scratch serial numbers off it for me first.”

 

[LP59]

Honest question to everyone arguing piracy is bad... And I do agree, btw. It's stolen IP, isn't it?

So, how do you justify being cool with profiling in general without making piracy look sort of ok?

Sound is not intellectual property and cannot be copyrighted. The famous example people like to cite as a rationalization is Harley Davidson's attempt to trademark (not copyright) the sound of their motors. Their attempt to do so ultimately failed however, and no trademark was ever granted.

 

[James Freeman]

In my personal opinion Fractal should remain hardware exclusive.

 

[EOengineer]

I used one of the popular trial resets way back when I was a broke audio engineering student. I’m not proud of it, and I wasn’t proud of it then. I never used them on anything someone paid me for, and as soon as I could afford it I abandoned all that and only use the stuff I’ve paid for. More than anything I just wanted to understand what I was missing.

A classmate eventually got busted using the same reset by the plugin company in a commercial setting and had to settle for a serious amount of money.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

[nightlight]

The thing about this kind of piracy is that it's anything and everything digital. Not just plugins: music, movies, books.

In the end, we've now end up in an AI era where nothing creative is rewarded. This disincentivises people from creating art or products that facilitate that art.

Kind of strange to see adults arguing that there's a justification for theft. In the end, you're just shooting yourself and all other artists in the foot.

You wouldn't steal a car. But you would steal plugins and books because they can be digitised?

Fantastic. See you later at the tuna cannery, where we'll all wind up working.

 

[Piing]

These were the times! Good friends with rich papá, and a (slow) mule

 

[James Freeman]

Don't copy that floppy.

 

[Orvillain]

Look at the smooth brains bending over backwards to justify theft. Big belly lols.

The simple fact is, you've never created anything worth buying, so you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

 

[Orvillain]

Honest question to everyone arguing piracy is bad... And I do agree, btw. It's stolen IP, isn't it?

So, how do you justify being cool with profiling in general without making piracy look sort of ok?

This is the kind of logic you get when you rely on South Park and Friends as your source of English education.

 

[Orvillain]

I used one of the popular trial resets way back when I was a broke audio engineering student. I’m not proud of it, and I wasn’t proud of it then. I never used them on anything someone paid me for, and as soon as I could afford it I abandoned all that and only use the stuff I’ve paid for. More than anything I just wanted to understand what I was missing.

A classmate eventually got busted using the same reset by the plugin company in a commercial setting and had to settle for a serious amount of money.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Honestly, most plugin companies would reset your trial once or twice for you, depending on the amount of time being trials and things like that.

 

[EOengineer]

Honestly, most plugin companies would reset your trial once or twice for you, depending on the amount of time being trials and things like that.

Yup. L6 actually did this for me when I was trialing Hx Native, which I did buy in part because they were so cool.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Honestly, most plugin companies would reset your trial once or twice for you, depending on the amount of time being trials and things like that.

Neural did this for me with their Tone King Imperial plugin, I downloaded it then work went crazy for a few weeks so I barely got to use it. They were really helpful tbf.

 

[Tito83]

This is the kind of logic you get when you rely on South Park and Friends as your source of English education.

Using ad hominem to criticize another person's logic makes you look very smart.

Sound is not intellectual property and cannot be copyrighted. The famous example people like to cite as a rationalization is Harley Davidson's attempt to trademark (not copyright) the sound of their motors. Their attempt to do so ultimately failed however, and no trademark was ever granted.

Absolutely not the same thing. While the sound of the engine is part of the experience, having a cheap bike that made that exact sound through a speaker would not make you not buy a Harley.

A guitar amp specifically is way past its initial intent, making the sound louder, it's actually an effect. We even have engineered ways to remove the "make sound louder" part to make it more manageable to use at home and recording. We are copying that effect in full. We are copying the very exact reason why a lot of people would actually buy the amp for.

And we could also mention how most digital modeling companies will go about how they digitally copied the circuit of amp X, Y and Z and how it makes the very exact sound and works exactly the same. All that without any direct compensation or even authorization in most cases. How is this not IP theft?

Just to make it clear. I'm just trying to understand the actual reason someone can say one IP theft is ok and the other one is not. And I'm not arguing what's legal or not. Legality is different from morality.

 

[kvik]

In the late 90's me and my brother would each get to pick one magazine a month and for us that would always be computer magazines. He liked "Hacker" which was mostly gaming oriented while I preferred "Bug" which had more of a general IT angle. Each came with a CD full of game and application demos which were covered in print but also a random assortment of driver updates and software that did this or that thing.

I used to absolutely fuck up our family PC installing each and every one of those softwares in order and exploring what they do. How could I pass by an inventory management software which would let me better manage my personal inventory of books, three music CDs, a handyman beaver plushy, and some amount of LEGOs?

Anyways, most of this software was limited shareware and I dreamed of owning full versions and experiencing all the additional wonders missing from my trial. I never could convince my parents to buy a full copy of any of it. Not because they couldn't afford it but mostly because at that time and place legally buying software that wasn't available at some physical store in another town was just an awful experience involving international bank transfers and hoping things would turn up in your mail months later. God forbid you tried online ordering. That would basically guarantee your card details getting stolen.

Most people instead trusted pirates who'd burn you a CD for a fee. The practice was extremelly wide spread and socially accepted. My god damned school teacher was a pirate and he'd openly hand out listings of games he had and we'd take to "the business" after class... I hated dealing with him and all the other pirates. They were always the most shady and unreliable types. Later when I took up drugs I noticed a strong resemblance to drug dealers who seemed to physically be unable to show up on time or do antyhing clean.

Soon I discovered Linux and open source software and this flipped everything. I took up programming and from some time in high school up to quite recently I had exclusively used open source software on my own computers, often times to my own immediate detriment. For example, in college I would refuse to use Matlab and would instead use Sage, having to do a bunch of extra work and pissing of the professors who never heard of him. I made it a point never to use closed source software, not because I was cheap (though I certainly was heavily broke) but because I saw infinitely more value in investing my time into software that I had source code of and being able to deeply understand and modify things to do exactly what I want and how I want it. Not having to rely on the good will or even good taste of the developer.

I've softened up on things lately. I realise there's only so much time I have left in the world and that I should more often take a pragmatic path through whatever bigger goal I'm after and not having to snag my way along taking deep dives into vaguely related subjects. I'm also making some money now so just buying my way through things became an option. I also financially support some open source developers that I believe in or for software that helped me along the way. It felt really nice to buy Reaper and finally support those guys. It's cool how it now says "registered to kvik" at the top of the window, it's something a 10 year old me would have been really excited about.

Sorry for this wall of text. I just felt the need to provide this personal context after the yesterday's mishap. Hopefully you can better understand where I'm coming from when I'm making clumsy philosophical arguments regarding software.

 

[paisleywookiee]

You are lucky to get away with Chewbacca there. I used some pics of Yoda in a Photoshop joke a few times and the site was asked to remove those! Seems some thieves get away with it...

It’s under fair use, parody.

 

[GTR37]

So are you also pleading that perfectly ok purchased items should not be returnable...?
I would!

I guess it's more reasonable in countries where many are not close to a shop, but still.

No , it a real phenomena

Have you met Timbuck3?