Can Software Piracy Be Justified?

A deep dive into something that the majority of us do.

#musicproduction #proaudio #flstudio

Timestampies! Yay!
0:00 - You wouldn't steal music for a PSA
1:35 - Corporate Emotional Manipulation
3:11 - There is Pirated Music on iTunes
4:35 - Anti-Piracy Scams and Corruption
8:57 - Case Study: Pro Tools v FL Studio
13:38 - The Inevitable Subscription Model
15:30 - Archival Piracy
17:22 - Piracy is not safe
20:14 - Nonsense I've Said To Justify Piracy
20:59 - 3 Clever Software Licensing Ideas
22:11 - Conclusion
24:45 - Credits

[BennJordan]

Thanks for all the kind words! <3 <3 <3
If you can't tell from the comment:view ratio, I'm wondering if YouTube's algo deprioritizes videos on piracy. If you think someone would enjoy this, share it (because the sidebar/recommended videos probably won't lol).
Finally, I didn't want this video to be hours long, so I didn't even open up the freeware/opensource can of worms here. I DO want to do a video on just that though as a sequel to this.

[JohnThelin]

I am a subtitler by trade (Swedish <>English). A decade or so ago, I did a Swedish subtitle for a very big mainstream movie, for one of the major movie studios. I did this for the cinema release, and because of how things worked back then, I only had the soundtrack to work from - I then saw a final cut of the movie, and made some adjustments, and only a few days later, the film premiered worldwide. In Sweden, with my subtitle.

A few weeks after that, I got a form that the movie company wanted me to sign. It included a clause where I signed away all rights to my subtitle. One problem with that: in Sweden that is illegal. By law, you cannot sign away intellectual property rights in a work of art, and a subtitle is just that.

I figured they wanted to be able to use my sub for the DVD release, maybe TV, etc., but that since I had now declined, they would have to hire another subtitler.

So when the DVD came out, I wanted to see how this other subtitler had solved some of the many, many instances of humorous wordplay in this movie.

It was not only my subtitle - which I had expressly denied them the right to use for anything but the cinema release (cinema and DVD have different subtitling standards) - but it was also an early draft (meaning that it was actually not the work I had delivered to them), and my name had been removed - also illegal in Sweden. That's a full three instances of breach of copyright in one.

This has already been a ridiculously long comment, but suffice it to say that my attempt at suing this company (which only years earlier had been part of the Pirate Bay trial, crowing about the absolute sanctity of copyright) came to naught. It wasn't about the money, but my union lawyer never understood that, so...

[matiasbenedit]

Once a friend asked me "If I buy a CD and it gets broken, shouldn't I be able to get a new one paying only the cost of the disc? After all, I have already paid for the "intellectual property included" with my previous purchase".
I never thought about it before, but it does make sense....

[RedMeansRecording]

I regularly turn down software reviews if the drm is ilok or subscription. It's just not worth it for me.

[Bestmannn]

Like Gabe Newell said: piracy is a service problem.
Why again is it that when I pay for plugins I have to deal with dongles, online DRM and all that crap, while if I pirate I typically get a drm-free version without any of the headache? I've actually pirated some software that I already own just because the DRM is so infuriating to deal with.

[supernoob]

i cited the text file from the torrent of your pale blue dot album in my first college essay which was a pro piracy persuasive essay so needless to say this video is EXTREMELY my shit

[davidspiers]

Adobe is taking the piss now. They buy Substance painter, so I think oh great I'm moving into 3D work so my expensive Adobe account might have some new found value. To my lack of surprise, Adobe has now separated their 3D apps into an additional subscription model basically doubling the monthly cost. As of Photoshop 2022 there is also a warning screen saying that the 3D functions it can do aren't working well enough so they're removing them! Where is the reward for long term customers? It is easy to see why people are moving to Affinity apps for 1 time purchase price, and also Black Magic DaVinci Resolve & Blender that are essentially free. Great video Benn!

[PeterClotworthy]

An important note: there are lots of pieces of Malware that can detect if they're running inside a VM and will play dead until they're running on real hardware. For example, the network interface cards usually say something like VMware Network Interface which makes it pretty trivial to find out!

At the end of the day it is a judgement call you'll have to make, but you might do everything right and still be infected.

This message was brought to you by the Copyright Holder's Union

[Neurotypique]

An interesting point when discussing this with a Cuban friend is that even the "fairly priced" models from a first world point of view can be equal to a month's income in cuba.
The new question is, is it fair to pirate a software when you're (intentionally or not) left out of the economical model?
Great points in this video though, thank you for covering this

[Ed-davies]

The level of research you put into video’s like this never fails to impress me.

[SyncrisisVideos]

I pirated flashbulb a time ago (2002 or somewhere around there). Back then I swore you MUST HAVE been another secret moniker for Richard D James, because I loved Aphex Twin so much, and your music at that time hit all of the right notes. Then, around 2008 or so I came into a pretty sizeable payout and wanted to give back, so I purchased yours, and a bunch of other artists music from iTunes. I had THOUGHT I was paying you for your music back then. Hopefully, I didn't pay those scammers D:

[noodlefunny]

Stellar job on the writing, this might be one of your best yet

[ClifBratcher]

Spent a lot of time hoarding pirated audio software in the late 90s and early 00s. Option paralysis slowed me down a lot, but trained me to focus less on the details until I was sure the bigger picture made sense for me. I also vowed to buy all the pirated software I had actually used when I could afford it...

Fast-forward 20 years and everything I use is "legal". The original option paralysis is back, but now with less guilt! >_<

[_goldfarb_]

I work for a software developer in the VFX industry and we face all these issues as well. We introduced a free non-commercial edition that allowed people to learn the software and then later 'Indie' limited commercial versions that were geared for freelancers and small studios. I don't know to what extent this has reduced piracy but I'm sure that it has reduced the barrier of entry for many.

[sdgsdgsdgish]

I used to pirate music software for years. But as the hobby grew and my personal income grew I could afford to buy the software instead. If I could not have pirated software in the beginning that would mean I would never be able to get into this hobby, and end up with 100% bought software. It's just more convenient to have the license in the end. So I would say pirated software was the best advertisement music software companies could ever ask for.

The subscription model is a bit worrying though. As a hobby musician that make 0 dollars from the music, I will not be dragged into a subscription service for 10 different services to be able to work on music. That is not sustainable. I want to buy the software when there is a sale, and then own that license for life.
The only subscription service that I do use is Splice. But that is just a more convenient way of buying sample packs, so I think its fine.
But its not workable solution for hobbyist to have several subscriptions to different software to be able to do the hobby. If the companies only want to target professionals, fine, but they will probably lose a large portion of the hobbyist.

[zoomosis]

The funny thing with option paralysis after pirating audio software is that in 2022 there is so much freeware & open source audio software (DAWs & plugins) available now that you could easily spend all your spare time exploring all of the free stuff. It's even got to a point where some pirate sites now offer torrents or DDLs of malware-free freeware/FOSS software just for convenience.

[alvaromedinagarcia]

I was a music producer with all-pirated software for years. Some years ago, I experienced exactly what Benn says near the end: I had tons of tools but knew them only superficially (except Cubase, which ironically I had paid a license). So I got rid of all the stuff I couldn't buy or get a free version. I installed bundled plugins from my soundcard and midi controllers. I searched for free alternatives (eg. George Yohng's W1 Limiter instead of the Waves L1). I got to work only with what I had and work creatively instead of downloading another Fabfilter plugin.

That said, these days I'm thinking about the thing at least for the Waves plugins. I bought several thinking they were forever; well, not. There is a limit of "reinstalls" and an installer must be downloaded, which doesn't work on all systems... so it actually makes it harder and challenging to own the plugins than to get a cracked bundle from a friend.

[JohnThelin]

Oh, one more data point that might not apply as much today, but an acquaintance of mine worked in the VFX industry, where at the time, Maya was the #1 3D modeling software. He told me that of the dozens of guys he'd worked with, sometimes on major Hollywood productions, every single one of these 3D programmer guys - including himself - had started learning Maya by pirating it

[rakshal]

Leave it to Benn to have the most levelheaded take.

[pdmidipd_patch]

Hi Benn, I think you could mention Reaper. It never locks, there is only a nag screen waiting for few seconds to start, there is no single reason to pirate it :)
When I used it in daily based I simply bought a license . The best part is that I paid, got my serial number and instantly worked without any crappy authentication system . IMO it's the best anti-piracy method