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Pirates

I

Ivan Garcia

New member
I am seriously considering pirating software for the very first time.
Let me explain.

For the last month or so I've been desperately trying to purchase Adobe's latest Photoshop upgrade.
However as I live in England this is not as easy as it may seem on the surface.

The price for CS4 Extended upgrade in the US is $349... nothing out of the ordinary there.. or is it?

Because I live in the UK, adobe wants to charge me a whooping $481 through the UK store.

I've tried everything, I registered on the US site with a NY hotel address, I get a "sorry sir your credit card is registered in England and we can confirm your address" Use the UK store.

OK (I say to myself), I'll pay via PayPal,... Ups... no can't do, your PayPal account is registered in England, use the UK store...

OK I'll buy via Phoning the US store ... "sorry sir your credit card is registered in England and we can confirm your address" Use the UK store.
Use what?.. is a visa card, accepted all over the world. "Sorry sir, Is for your own protection, so that your card is not used illegally"... umm yes, thanks mate.. but I don't want to pay $132 for your "Protection".

Not to be out done, or out smarted by what in my mind are a bunch of pirates, and not wanting to become one myself, I enlisted the help of an acquaintance in the US.
The plan? I'll send him the founds via PayPal, he purchases the serial number, and Emails it to me.
Hahahahaha... I've outsmarted Adobe( I say to myself) I am victorious... you can't deny service to a US citizen ...

He phones Adobe US and asks them about the legality of the deal... wait for it... Adobe says Its illegal and advises him to walk away!!! which he does.
I like to know how reselling what I purchase to a third party is illegal.. I mean, if it really is, we can kiss the capitalist way of life goodbye.


ADOBE if you are reading, I like to know why I need to pay some $132 more than my US counterpart just because I live in the UK...
I mean, I can download the demo version and use it for 30 days for free, and the only thing I need to convert the software, is a serial number which arrives in an Email.

Now, Adobe, if you please, where do you get the nerve to charge me $132 for an Email?.
You wonder why people pirates your software?.. stop overcharging the rest of the world, and maybe, just maybe they will stop pirating your software.
PS:

$132 may not seem like much .. but that's because the dollar has gained a bit on the British pound.. 3 weeks ago the price in teh UK was $646 for the upgrade while the US price was the same $349... now that's what I call making a killing
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Ivan,

Obviously this is awful! I see no justification.

Can you open a bank account in the US. Barclays has banks here? Then have your paypal account referenced to your US bank account. now when you upgrade, you need an old serial number. Will that cause a problem?

One has to read the TOS of the software licensing in Adobe's website.

and yes, no wonder people pirate software!

BTW, how on earth can retouchers in Romania and Bangladesh even afford a copy of CS4 I have no idea. I'm sure the wages are very low! Maybe CS4 goes for $70 in these cash-strapped places.

Meanwhile one can simple get hacked passwords online! There seems no sense in it!

Asher
 
C

Colleen Vermillion

pro member
Ivan Garcia said:
I am seriously considering pirating software for the very first time.

$132 may not seem like much .. but that's because the dollar has gained a bit on the British pound.. 3 weeks ago the price in teh UK was $646 for the upgrade while the US price was the same $349... now that's what I call making a killing
Click to expand...

So, you're willing to sell your soul for $132 US (or a little more depending on the exchange rate)? Just remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Warez is often infested with trojans and keyloggers and with Adobe's on-line activation checks, you probably aren't going to be able to install any bug fixes (assuming the problems aren't caused by they way you're bypassing the licensing). It may end up costing you more than the $132 and you'll still have bad karma for theft. If Adobe is charging you more than you think the product is worth, you should give your support to one of their competitors who is charging a fair price, or refuse to upgrade until the price comes down.

Adobe has different divisions that sell to different markets and they charge as high a price as they can for their market. The company won't allow divisions to poach customers from other divisions so the company as a whole can maximize their profit. If you want prices to come down, more folks in the UK need to stop paying the higher prices. Adobe is not going to tell their shareholders "Well we could have made 20% more than we did last quarter, but we felt bad about taking advantage of the Brits' love of Photoshop and lack of price sensitivity." The US gets lower prices because we have a whole mess of cheap penny pinchers :) Raise the US price $100 and enough of us will go buy something else that Adobe would actually lose money they would have made at the cheaper price.

Pricing a product like Photoshop is not about adding up how much it cost you to make it and tacking on some amount of profit. It's not a widget that goes into some other machine. It's a product with a trade name that's used as a verb, and has it's own section of books on Amazon.com - that gives Adobe a lot of pricing leverage.

-Colleen
 
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K

Kathy Rappaport

pro member
Taxes and VAT..and other hidden costs

Perhaps there is VAT attached to the purchase, or that Adobe pays a price for doing business that costs more over in the UK?
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Ivan

same engl. version prices here/ +70 $ for localised versions.
Taxes are not entering in Adobe's price policy, as we've the same prices as p. example in Germany, but 12 % smaller taxes.

Collleen is correct: "charge as high a price as they can for their market."

For myself I took the decision to stop jumping on every upgrade; even more, as not all the new functions might be interesting for my workflow, and I prefer other RAWConverters than ACR, anyway. The absence of 64 bit-versions on the macs is another reason.

I know quite some other photographers/media workers who avoid now to jump on every update, too.
 
M

Mike Shimwell

New member
It is galling, however, for us Brits to have to pay a higher photoshop tax than those in the US - clearly it's reasonable that Nicolas should pay more for a french version*, but we don't even get proper English for our pounds.

Actually, if you don't mind waiting the disc version is cheaper than downloading because of vat and supply location and it's cheaper again to buy from Amazon and wait a few days. All crackers really, but simply the working out of capitalist economic theory -a bit like the banks.

Mike

* Irony - in case it isn't obvious!
 
I

Ivan Garcia

New member
@Asher.
Serial Number is not the issue, I own a legal copy of CS3.
Opening a US bank account is next to impossible for me. For a start, I don't live in the US and have no address there, so that's a no go. I tried opening a US PayPal account with a NY Hotel address and my credit card. PayPal allows you to change the billing address, but only within the US; no option for a UK address, so that failed too. (adobe detects the credit card billing address as UK, and refuses US service).
The only thing I can do is wait while I watch the British pound plummet to the floor.. then it will be Dollars for Pounds and I won't feel cheated. Alternately the Pound could get stronger again(keep on dreaming mate) and It may reach the magical $2 for £1, then I can justify a quick trip to NY for a Photo equipment Shopping orgy. Until then... well, you get the picture...
As for Romanians and Indians. I think I finally figured out where the hackers come from... LOL.
@ Colleen
Nope, I am not planning to sell my soul any time soon. I understand your point of view, I am all for making a little profit myself, the key word here is "Little". However, what Adobe does with its pricing is out right robbery. Like I said, 3 weeks ago the price was $646, which is just excessive in any book... by all means, make a profit, but adjust your billing policies to the Dollar market prices, and correct it accordingly.
@ Kathy
The tax argument, doesn't hold up, how can you justify $132 tax? and the hidden cost? What hidden cost is there in sending an Email?
@ Michael.
I use a windows 64bit system with 8Gb memory, and although I did consider passing on this upgrade. I've tried the demo, and it goes like a bat out of hell, so not upgrading is not an option.
I will eventually make the purchase. I just wanted to get my anger at this unfair pricing policy, and adobe's refusal to accept my credit card on the US store, out of my chest.
 
C

Colleen Vermillion

pro member
Ivan Garcia said:
I am all for making a little profit myself, the key word here is "Little". However, what Adobe does with its pricing is out right robbery.
Click to expand...

Well there's the rub. One man's robbery is another man's fair market value. You have no idea from the end price how little or how big Adobe's profit is from your purchase. What a product is worth is what someone will pay for it. If you are going to end up buying the upgrade, then it is worth what they're charging for it and they shouldn't be charging any less.

The price in different regions is probably the result of some complicated factoring of number of people in the market, how much disposable income they have, Adobe's brand strength, and the market's view of the competing products. Linux and open source software adoption, which last time I checked was higher in Europe than the US, might have some influence on the market. When you have less people to sell to you have to charge more to make the same profit. So it's hard to tell if Adobe is making a killing or just a reasonable profit with the information we have access to...

-Colleen
 
I

Ivan Garcia

New member
I've just finished reading the arguments in the link you provided, and having taken in to consideration all said... I just can't see how Adobe can justify their pricing policy outside the US. If they are making a profit at $132 mark up over the US market, then 3 weeks ago the mark up should have been $132, not $300. So, all things considered, I am going to speak to Adobe in a language they can understand... stuff you and your product, I am going to spend my hard earned $$$ elsewhere. ;-)
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Ivan,

I have the issue with Adobe for not providing updates for CS2 like ACR4.

I have very little need for CS4. In fact Photoshop 7 can cover such a lot that I use it on another computer.

I think the time has come to look seriously at Bibble, Aperture and Silky Pix and LightZone.

Time to catch up with what is now in these very well matured programs.

Asher
 
D

Duke Beattie

Member
If you would really like to get confused on pricing... Look at the student pricing.
I can get Photoshop CS4 extended (complete version) for $299.98..
if I was a student at my university it would be $199.98..
For a while they had a weird agreement. You couldn't use it for any commercial uses. Like they would know. But, they changed that a couple of years ago.
So.. I am not sure of the student pricing in the UK, but you could always enroll and get it really cheap.. Just checked the Adobe site for educational prices.. These are the complete version.. £228.85 ($341.82)faculty/staff or £155.25 ($231.89)for students. I think this is with VAT. Conversions are as of today..
I have never had any problem with upgrades/help using the educational versions.. they are the same product. I use it for my work at Washington State and at home also, since I paid for it. My department was to cheap to buy it for me.... All this just verifies that they could sell it for a reasonable price.
 
C

Colleen Vermillion

pro member
Duke Beattie said:
All this just verifies that they could sell it for a reasonable price.
Click to expand...

It does no such thing. Student pricing is an investment in the future. You take a loss now so to gain a new customer. People resist changing tools because it means learning a new interface, so if you get them hooked early it's harder for your competitors to get them to switch. And you're violating your license agreement (which still contains a no commercial use clause) and exposing your employer to legal action by using that software at work. The BSA offers cash rewards up to a million dollars to people who report software piracy.

I could just as easily say your actions are proof that Adobe has to charge high prices to offset the cost of people stealing copies. Adobe sold you that copy at a discounted price with the hope that your employer would end up buying a full copy for you when they saw that most of their workforce already knew how to use the tool. Why should your employer buy you the tools you need to do your job when you're willing to steal them? Adobe has lost the price of the retail version plus the difference between the student version and the retail version on just you, and you're encouraging other people to do the same thing.

If we were talking about photographs and not software y'all would be outraged. What if the story was this:

Well I licensed my photo to Duke for his personal web site for a modest fee under certain terms, and now I find his employer has been using it in all their international print advertising. I could have sold that image to the employer for ten times what Duke paid for it and they would have been getting a good deal. Now I'm out that money and this other client wants all the photos for their advertising at the same price I sold that one image to Duke. And to top it off I found some company selling web site templates has stolen low resolution proofs from my web gallery and is including them in their product because they knew it was unlikely that they'd get caught. Even though I did catch them, it's more money than it's worth to take them to court. So now none of those images are selling because they've been plastered all over the Internet on crappy unprofessional web sites and they aren't worth anything to paying clients.

Licensed products are different from toasters and other manufactured goods. The value of an photograph is not the sum of some hourly rate for the photographer, depreciation of the camera and other equipment, and the cost of the paper and ink in the print. A particular image might be worth a lot of money to a client A under certain terms, and worth less to client B under more restrictive terms. Should you try to charge both clients the price A would pay and lose the sale to client B, or should you charge both clients the price B would pay and lose the extra money A would have been happy to pay (essentially giving away the more generous usage license), or should you charge your clients what the image is worth to them under the licensing terms they need?

-Colleen
 
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B

Bill Miller

New member
Asher Kelman said:
Hi Ivan,


I think the time has come to look seriously at Bibble, Aperture and Silky Pix and LightZone.

Time to catch up with what is now in these very well matured programs.

Asher
Click to expand...

You should have switched a long time ago Asher. Bibble is the way to go, its fast and easy to use.

Colleen Vermillion said:
It does no such thing. Student pricing is an investment in the future. You take a loss now so to gain a new customer. People resist changing tools because it means learning a new interface, so if you get them hooked early it's harder for your competitors to get them to switch. And you're violating your license agreement (which still contains a no commercial use clause) and exposing your employer to legal action by using that software at work. The BSA offers cash rewards up to a million dollars to people who report software piracy.

I could just as easily say your actions are proof that Adobe has to charge high prices to offset the cost of people stealing copies. Adobe sold you that copy at a discounted price with the hope that your employer would end up buying a full copy for you when they saw that most of their workforce already knew how to use the tool. Why should your employer buy you the tools you need to do your job when you're willing to steal them? Adobe has lost the price of the retail version plus the difference between the student version and the retail version on just you, and you're encouraging other people to do the same thing.

If we were talking about photographs and not software y'all would be outraged. What if the story was this:

Well I licensed my photo to Duke for his personal web site for a modest fee under certain terms, and now I find his employer has been using it in all their international print advertising. I could have sold that image to the employer for ten times what Duke paid for it and they would have been getting a good deal. Now I'm out that money and this other client wants all the photos for their advertising at the same price I sold that one image to Duke. And to top it off I found some company selling web site templates has stolen low resolution proofs from my web gallery and is including them in their product because they knew it was unlikely that they'd get caught. Even though I did catch them, it's more money than it's worth to take them to court. So now none of those images are selling because they've been plastered all over the Internet on crappy unprofessional web sites and they aren't worth anything to paying clients.

Licensed products are different from toasters and other manufactured goods. The value of an photograph is not the sum of some hourly rate for the photographer, depreciation of the camera and other equipment, and the cost of the paper and ink in the print. A particular image might be worth a lot of money to a client A under certain terms, and worth less to client B under more restrictive terms. Should you try to charge both clients the price A would pay and lose the sale to client B, or should you charge both clients the price B would pay and lose the extra money A would have been happy to pay (essentially giving away the more generous usage license), or should you charge your clients what the image is worth to them under the licensing terms they need?

-Colleen
Click to expand...

Well said Colleen, while is hurts to pay the high prices sometimes it is necessary.
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Bill Miller said:
Well said Colleen, while is hurts to pay the high prices sometimes it is necessary.
Click to expand...

Hi all,

be carefull with your comments and reread carefully Ivan posts, he didn't say that he didn't want to pay for the software, he said that he didn't understand the difference of price between continents…

There is such a difference too between French version for Canada and for France (or for Belgium, or for Switzerland).

Reread also Colleen post (not the latter, the one before), the statement which I believe is true is that the price of the SW is not based on cost plus a certain margin, but in accordance with that the market can feed Adobe.

I don't think this is healthy. It is just as the system is. Not human.

I wish I could avoid bying/using CS (since V. 1.1!) but Raw converters even the very good ones such as Bibble or C1 (As Michael, I don't like Adobe Raw Converter IQ) do stop their good work when PS starts his (layering, retouching, cloning etc…)

Today, I can't imagine working without PS, and yes I tried some pseudo competitors (on Mac). Be sure that at the very first occasion I'll switch if a good solution is professionaly livable…

Still, Adobe's policy isn't fair nor good. We're just caught and that's a law I don't like, I do imagine that Ivan is in the same mood…

"Necessary" doesn't mean it's fair… :-{
 
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D

Duke Beattie

Member
Quote from faq on the adobe site..
"Good news! You can use Adobe Education software (any title!) to produce commercial/professional paid-for work when you leave school, or even while you are in school. In this regard, Adobe does not limit how student software is used. So students can use it to learn and to make money!"

This applies to the Educational version and not the Student version. So when I 'leave' (retire) school I would have to buy the regular version or an upgrade. As I said I purchased the Educational version (not the University) and use it mainly at work.
 
C

Colleen Vermillion

pro member
Restrictions on Use of Adobe Student Editions
End users may purchase only one license of any Adobe Student Edition product. This license may be used only on privately owned computers. Adobe Student Edition products may not be resold by the end user.
Click to expand...

So you can sell the work you create with a student edition (i.e. use it for commercial purposes), but I don't think you're allowed to install it on the company computer and use it for company work. If you bought it through your university's reseller (i.e. your school had some volume licensing agreement with Adobe), there is a restriction that it can be for "personal use only". Donating it to your company is a violation of the spirit of the educational discount if nothing else.

-Colleen
 
D

Daniel Buck

New member
Asher Kelman said:
I have very little need for CS4. In fact Photoshop 7 can cover such a lot that I use it on another computer.
Click to expand...
Agreed, the tool I use the most is the curves layer in combination with layer masks and folders, that is what I use for probably 80% of my photoshop work!

However, running more than 4 gigs of ram works wonderfully in CS4 under Vista 64! I am amazed at how well my laptop with 8 gigs of ram handles very large photoshop files! I allocate about 6 gigs of ram to Photoshop, and it's working nicely even on large format scans :) That's the one big reason to upgrade to CS4, in my opinion, because it is 64 bit and can use more ram.
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Daniel Buck said:
Agreed, the tool I use the most is the curves layer in combination with layer masks and folders, that is what I use for probably 80% of my photoshop work!

However, running more than 4 gigs of ram works wonderfully in CS4 under Vista 64! I am amazed at how well my laptop with 8 gigs of ram handles very large photoshop files! I allocate about 6 gigs of ram to Photoshop, and it's working nicely even on large format scans :) That's the one big reason to upgrade to CS4, in my opinion, because it is 64 bit and can use more ram.
Click to expand...

Lucky guy!
Not the Mac version… no more than 3700 Mb of RAM used even if 8GB are well installed in their slots.

Seems that Apple is still punished to have published Aperture…
 
M

Michael Fontana

pro member
Nicolas Claris said:
Lucky guy!
Not the Mac version… no more than 3700 Mb of RAM used even if 8GB are well installed in their slots.

Seems that Apple is still punished to have published Aperture…
Click to expand...

Nicolas

well one point is, that Apple didn't wrote all the libs, heriting from carbon time, into 64 bit.

But then still, PS can use more than the 3.7 GB here, as the OS, having plenty of RAM °borrows° it to PS. Even if PS is open only, I have sometimes only 120 MB left, when working on big files. Someone must grab it.

The guys from barefaets. com have a article about it.
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Michael Fontana said:
well one point is, that Apple didn't wrote all the libs, heriting from carbon time, into 64 bit.
Click to expand...

Ok, but they do sell it !

I'll have a look at … well it is not
barefeets.com! nor barefoot.com! and not barefacts.com or barefaets.com

Michael you're teasing me! can you post the url you wanted to point me at? Thanks!
 
C

Colleen Vermillion

pro member
Y'all might find this interesting http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11078

Adobe said demand for Creative Suite 4 was weaker than expected and “the main cause for the shortfall in fourth quarter revenue.”
Click to expand...

Apparently CS4 is priced wrong for the bad economic times. People might not like paying the price for CS4, but as long as they do pay it, that's what Adobe will charge for it. When they stop paying it, the price will come down. It's possible we'll be seeing more deals from the Adobe store - right now they're discounting the upgrade from CS2 to be the same price as upgrading from CS3. I bet the attempt to strong arm people into upgrading every time a new edition comes out by charging higher upgrade prices for older versions bit them in the butt. I wonder when they're going to try to cause old editions to expire after a certain amount of time and force folks to move to a subscription model, or if they've learned their lesson about squeezing their customers too hard.

-Colleen
 
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