Now just for the record I am not defending piracy. But I do want to point out how utterly stupid the terms of service for the various different types of software are and how they are, in my opinion, counter-productive to making people become legit customers.
For example, I recently bought a monthly subscription for Modo. According to the rules I am allowed to have it “activated” on 2 machines at a time. Only being allowed to install modo on 2 computers at a time is pretty draconian to begin with, but I thought it wasn’t so bad since it’s still 2 computers. But then I realized that while you can have it installed on 2 machines, it can only run on 1 at a time. This made me pretty angry because I had introduced my mother to 3D modeling/sculpting and she being an artist (she likes painting, both traditional and digital via touchpad/laptop) was pretty exited for it. This is a pretty big deal since she is in her 50’s and doesn’t normally care about this sort of thing and thus this may be the only time ever where I have found any common ground with her hobbies. I told her that I would share my modo license with since it can be installed on 2 machines. But now I learn that modo only allows you to run it on 1 at a time. Wtf?
Ok, look. I get it that companies hate piracy. But let’s me honest here, if you charge a lot of money for your software (and most of these companies do. 60+dollars a month for a single program is a fair bit of money for a lot of people) and yet you still treat your customers like ■■■■ by pulling this kind of crap, people are going to pirate the ■■■■ out of your software. Now actual companies won’t, because they aren’t going to risk getting their pants sued off (unless they are stupid), but do you really think that some random enthusiasts are going to pay all this money only to have their use of the software be extremely limited by these draconian rules? Of course they won’t. They are under no pressure to be buy it and thus they probably won’t.
Why do these companies not realize that this kind of nonsense doesn’t accomplish a god ■■■■ thing other than drive away legit customers?
That specific thing probably isn’t a big issue for most people, at least you can use the software on multiple machines, some plugins and software are licensed only to one machine.
The point of a policy like that is to ensure that only the person who purchases the software will be using it. Or at the very least, 1 individual at a time. So in a way it technically does accomplish what they set out to do. I can’t say I’ve come across many that have that policy though, or at least that I’m aware of.
It doesn’t. You aren’t their target group, companies buying 1000 licenses at once are. So if you pirate it now, and buy a nice license later when you use it for your job, since you already know how to use it, they still win.
But does it? What’s stopping annoyed customers from just finding an illegal copy and using that instead? This is the whole problem with DRM as a concept. The more you punish the consumer, the more they are likely to just not buy it.
But that just begs the question why they even bother with this DRM nonsense. Look at Houdini, they just outright give their program away for free (albeit, with some limitations) for those who aren’t using it to make money.
If their business model is working the way it is, then why should they change it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If their profits start to decrease, then they will change. Until then …
Piracy is caused from many points. One of them is availability. For example, to play a subscription game like Wow you need to have a credit card, not a big deal for people in developed countries, where credit cards are lent to people who know that can pay at the end of the month. I know by a fact that 15 year old kids from developed countries they start to acquire their first credit cards, thanks to their parents. What they do? They just pay 14.99 a month and they can play. Now, in developing countries, the bank will give you credits when they see that you can pay it, in that case being, when you are working in a stable job. Meaning that you first credit card in a developing country, your first credit card is after you graduate from college. Making the urges to play a game very strong because you can’t have the permissions or the requirement to obtain it, therefore, are cheat servers that can provide with games like WoW, for free.
You don’t need a credit card to play most subscription games like World of Warcraft; Debit Cards, Paypal, Direct Debit, and Virtual Visa are all also accepted in the case of WoW.
Also, in most developed countries 15 year-olds do *not *get credit cards. The USA is a bizarre exception where people lack common sense.
Well by that logic why not make each person at the home buy their own TV as well? I get it why it’s not allowed to install the program on a million different computers, but for personal home use it makes no sense for it not to be possible to share the license with others of the same household. It’s just greedy. And as my OP pointed out, it’s not even guaranteed to work since annoyed customers who don’t want to pay for the program more than once (do you really think the same family is going to spend 120-180$ a month on this?) might just end up pirating additional copies. Or even stop bothering with the legal one at all. It’s a shortsighted and a stupid strategy.