Expensive software + Pirates make me a sucker

As you may have noticed I am on a tear about what is good and bad in the world of P2P file sharing.

As I was poking around the web I found an argument by a person that claimed "Ask any graphics designer, I'll bet my ass that his/her intro to photo editing would have been a pirated version of Photoshop."

Ooooo I suddenly feel out of touch with the general population again... Its sort of a queasy, light-headed feeling.

Why do I feel this way? Because, after only playing around with it on machines at my work and on friends computers, I bought photoshop as soon as I could scrape together the money to do so even though I was very poor. (I did get a good deal on an older version) Was I mad? A lunatic? I must be at least a freak of nature.

I have personal owned Photoshop since the 1.2 version. (I have the floppies to prove it.) I have kept it up to date at a pretty large personal expense. it was often a financial challenge to keep it current, but I saw this as necessary for me to advance in my profession. So…

A. Is it fair that because I respect the work that goes into making something as complex as PS, I have such a higher cost of entry to its use? Is it right that I have to compete with people that didn’t have the same feelings of obligation, didn’t pay to own the software and honed their skills on cracked copies or copies using borrowed serial numbers? Especially now that it is so easy to get?

B. I have heard it implied many times that software companies set the price for applications with piracy in mind. Since they know that a certain number of people will not pay. They adjust the price higher for those of us that will, in order to cover those losses. The insane cost of PS that I have paid over the years may be in part due to this and it could be said that I am paying a tax so that the people not willing to pay can use the software.

These are just some thoughts… I agree that file sharing won’t be going away and that we need to get used to its effects, both positive and negative. Maybe Adobe will create a “Loyal user program” and start giving me every other update for free… heh, I wont hold my breath.

So, what about the people that have always paid for the software? Are we just stupid? Maybe so.