Well, I was thinking "college age" more than college. Giving the software as part of arts grants is another option. Lot's of people at the San Francisco Exploratorium would probably use it, and they actually have a lot of inroads in their local art communities. The main thing though is to get it into the hands of young users who will have influence and develop into more professional later on.

The basic tenet though is that even piracy serves a function by spreading the software. Ideally, you want more control over it and less actual piracy.

Rob Mack

Yes, Sonic Foundry/Sony has been very very reasonable about licenses and it's one of the many things I've really appreciated about Vegas. I like being able to use the software on all the computers I ever sit at (work, home, laptop).

Rob Mack

Had a friend telling me 20 years ago that credit card numbers worked the same way. If you had the algorythm you could make up numbers and get pizzas delivered.

Could have been a myth, of course.

Rob Mack

The CC number story is based on fact. CC numbers use a generated check digit, or at least they used to, years ago, before merchants had realtime connectivity to validate purchases. Remember when the merchant would make a phone call to authorize a purchase above a threshhold amount? Purchases below that amount would not be authorized, but the CC number would be checked for validity of the check digit. One mail-order processing package I had direct experience with had algorithms to check CC numbers for validity and to catch operator entry errors by doing the check. In early days of the WWW, when certain websites required a CC number to purportedly ensure that the user was of legal age, several utilities became available that would generate the check digits for madeup CC numbers.

The piracy makes Vegas more popular. Without piracy Premiere wins. Without piracy the publics schools can´t teach the news softwars. Make money with piracy is bad. Teaching itsnt. Sorry for the bad english. Where are the spanish version of Vegas?

Erni

Welllll...I doubt there are any schools out there that knowingly use pirated software, and they shouldn't be using it. One of the jobs of schools is to socialize people - to encourage them to be responsible member of society. They can't very well do that if they condone piracy.

This is not to say that schools don't have pirated software on their systems. Individuals may put it there and many schools don't have the ability to audit their systems.

Also, I don't think that piracy gives one software title an advantage over another. They're all piratable.

No software company can just let piracy happen, but they can have programs that simulate the good effects. Academic discounts, fully functional trials, gifts, grants, all help get the software into people's hands.

Personally, I'm busy enough that I could easily install a 30 day trial and then not have a chance to use it for another 30 days. That happenend to me with PPro. I'd love it if it just counted 15 or 30 days of actual use.

Rob Mack

Piracy, the way it is currently defined, is unbeatable. And yes, schools really do just let it happen. I went to a pretty reputable high school myself, but I'll tell you, on a technical / legal level, absolutely nothing would have functioned without piracy and turning the other way. Maybe this little story will help you see how the latest computer generation sees things.

I stand by everything I write. I ran my highschool website for a number of years, and when I came on board there was a full "WAREZ" directory announce in the comment tags right on the homepage. They had everything from Photoshop to AutoCAD to SoftImage and on and on. I had known about it, and for fun, I searched the web to see how much money that directory was "supposedly" worth, the number reached well into the tens-of-thousands. Students were stealing and selling hardware, teachers were making all kinds of inappropriate decisions and asking the techies to clean it up. Most of the techies were district hired, but a few of us were just computer-loving students (geeks). We did our best to thrwart viruses and stop the theft, but nobody who mattered cared. The more I (and I can only assume the other students) learned, the worse it just seemed to get. There were a few hacking attempts I saw by my older peers, and I regret standing idly by while I watched and learned what they were doing; messing with transcripts (which were supposedly backed up on paper, and you'd get caught), and then graduating and going on great universities - at least they really did have skills. It was no issue for the aspiring student to learn how to get past the all-too-primitive security systems on the computers in the library, which were practically hard-wired to the main machines in the office. Fake students, fake accounts, all on the machines which were mostly all running illegal operating systems (and I know all this for a fact). I wanted to make changes, but seriously I was just a kid. I was an overly emotional male high-school student who was, heh, too busy having a relationship with someone I probably shouldn't legally have. The best thing I did was to finally drop out. This was, of course, after being in high school for five years (yea, they payed great attention to me).

Now, I really don't believe in pirating, and I am only lucky enough (by talent and opportunity) to abstain from it myself, but I'm at the age and in the places where, without piracy, anybody I've ever known who was successful couldn't have ever had the edge to make it, anywhere. And you'd be surprised how many college students are willing to fork the money over to be legit. In fact, everyone I've known has wanted to be legit, but unless they could make the cash that makes it affordable, well, they won't stop using the software. And if you're asking them to cut cellphone payments or any other bills, forget it, they have enough trouble affording rent. The good news is, and I say this from personal experience, once you GO legit, you really don't want to go back. Then again, I haven't had my financial world fall apart on me. :
Speaking of which, I'm kinda still looking for a part-time / full-time job. :) heh.

You're saying tons about what happens with computer systems in high schools.

My life partner is a high school teacher and another long-time friend was hired at the same school to implement a technology training program for staff while teaching a few classes to students.

What I'm hearing from them (and this is how I interpret it), is that managing these systems or even having the slightest computer proficiency is not really a core job activity. I have to agree. School staff have way to much to do to be fooling with a computer during or even after instruction time.

Schools and school districts usually don't have the money for this stuff and it's not their core mission to run such a system. Most employees still refer to a monitor as a "TV" and the keyboard as a "typewriter". They can't successfully send email, let alone add an attachment to the message.

When security does get implemented, it's so draconian that the only way to get anything done seems to be by breaking rules and so people turn a blind eye to piracy. I have to say, though, that this particular San Francisco school seems to have a handle on the "blind eyes" - people who have eyes at all don't seem to be letting things slide. That's only a couple of percent of the staff, I think.

I can see just two routes to solve this. One is for businesses to pick up the tab for IT support at schools and for them to have some responsibility for oversight. It needs to be a program that runs on it's own and can't be tapped for other budgetary needs. It probably needs to be some sort of statewide business association that handles it, preferably a membership organization rather than a governmental body. Yes, it's a conservative approach, but even conservatives have a place in this world.

The other is to go open source, but that doesn't stop students from trafficing in commercial software on the open source system. It just allows students to run free copies of the software they need for school at home. I don't think this is so practical though, since students should be using software they'll use later in the workplace.

Rob Mack

I recently bought my first legal Vegas and Architect. I liked the pirated version so much, I just went ahead and bought the real thing.
Personally, I think that, without piracy, the whole computer world would have died in it's infancy.

........I think that, without piracy, the whole computer world would have died in it's infancy..........

I think that statement is absurd.

Yep. That's a pretty big stretch. Maybe piracy made WinZip the most common archiver, but it didn't build the whole industry.