My Opinion is that for 900$ a program, THATS stealing. PLUS if you read the contract agreement while installing, its one per computer.
Now, My College has AT LEAST 1000 computers, and i'm not being generous (Biggest College in North America)
And they all run on the same copy of Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Reader, Photoshope, Illustrator, AutoCad, InDesign etc etc etc.
Now, thoes programs cost between 500 - 1200$ each, for each computer (while, some ahve all of thoes, some don't)
BUT if they obeyed the Liscencing, then, well, major green stuff right there. (while Monopoly Money, and Canadian tire Funds to be exact)
Educational copies of programs (which is what they use for schools) are MUCH much cheaper than the retail version, and usually companies give discounts to schools as well as special licenses to install on many computers.
And I will allow this thread to stay so long as it doesn't turn into a discussion of how to download programs/games illegally.
Photoshop, and most Adobe programs, are in the range of $200-$600; Creative Suite is around $1300.
What college do you go to btw?
you call approximately 10,000 students the largest college in north america? I doubt thats top 500..
And yes its very wrong. It is stealing no matter how you look at it .And with these expensive programs its often a fellany charge. Schools dont illegealy run multiple copies either they have special circumstances.
1) Actually Universities and Colleges must have valid licenses.
2) Licenses are cheaper to buy than buying one copy at a time
3) Each software company may send an inspector to make sure that you have valid licenses otherwise you may get sued for making illegal copies.
and to answer the threads original question.... NO downloading is not a bad thing because noone loses any money. Music industry makes money from selling blank cds, hello, they make money from selling blank cds so they are actually encouraging you to make copies. As for games thats also a lie that they lose money, look at their sales and you tell me how much money they lose. As for software, yup you guessed it another lie. Software industry makes loads of money, just ask Bill Gates (careful...he might lie to you). Every big corporate company uses Adobe or an accounting software or whatever they need for business so dont think software industry is losing anything.
I remember when double-disc cd's (music) cost damn near 40 dollars... now since the piracy they're being more reasonable with their cd pricing.
I rarely see a cd for over 20 dollars now
In china.. they were pirating world of warcraft retails lol.. so blizzard actually sold the official retail copy at a price very close to the pirate price to make it more appealing