i had pirated copies of way too many DAWS in 2002... cakewalk, fruityloops (before the lawsuit), acid, logic, ableton. after maybe a year, i figured out acid was the one i could settle in to easier (and once sony had let it out of their grips, cause ew), and that was the one i bought!
I am a subtitler by trade (Swedish English). A decade or so ago, I did a Swedish subtitle for a very big mainstream movie, for one of the major movie studios. I did this for the cinema release, and because of how things worked back then, I only had the soundtrack to work from - I then saw a final cut of the movie, and made some adjustments, and only a few days later, the film premiered worldwide. In Sweden, with my subtitle. A few weeks after that, I got a form that the movie company wanted me to sign. It included a clause where I signed away all rights to my subtitle. One problem with that: in Sweden that is illegal. By law, you cannot sign away intellectual property rights in a work of art, and a subtitle is just that. I figured they wanted to be able to use my sub for the DVD release, maybe TV, etc. , but that since I had now declined, they would have to hire another subtitler. So when the DVD came out, I wanted to see how this other subtitler had solved some of the many, many instances of humorous wordplay in this movie. It was not only my subtitle - which I had expressly denied them the right to use for anything but the cinema release (cinema and DVD have different subtitling standards) - but it was also an early draft (meaning that it was actually not the work I had delivered to them), and my name had been removed - also illegal in Sweden. That's a full three instances of breach of copyright in one. This has already been a ridiculously long comment, but suffice it to say that my attempt at suing this company (which only years earlier had been part of the Pirate Bay trial, crowing about the absolute sanctity of copyright) came to naught. It wasn't about the money, but my union lawyer never understood that, so...
Once a friend asked me "If I buy a CD and it gets broken, shouldn't I be able to get a new one paying only the cost of the disc? After all, I have already paid for the "intellectual property included" with my previous purchase". I never thought about it before, but it does make sense....
You could, and we did that a lot back in the day, all you had to do was put the CD in the PC, and the n burn the music onto a blank CD, did it all the time back then
@@daronjohnson9095 you people don't have CD burners in your computers anymore? Just yesterday I burnt a CD with maps for my 2005 Citroen C5 V6's navigation system, including police radar locations and other interesting things, thanks to Here Maps. No, I don't use my phone to navigate and yes, I do listen to CD's since they have vastly superior sound quality than streaming and the car came from the factory with a Clarion 6 CD changer and JBL 8 speaker and amplifier system. I love burning copies of my originals and I love my car.
My Maschine has the basic paid for software to get the thing actually working the rest is pirated , I’m not that impressed with it so I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on buying the plugins , I will now sell the maschine with the basic software licence and never give one fuck about native instruments or it’s plugins, I’ll stick with my MPC and my free software that came with it , I.E all the software you need to make music
Agreed. A decade as a music tech reviewer in Australia’s peak magazine era and I just couldn’t bring myself to deal with dongles or DRM. Too many alternatives, and with the limited power we have as media, we can steer attention to companies doing the right thing.
Like Gabe Newell said: piracy is a service problem. Why again is it that when I pay for plugins I have to deal with dongles, online DRM and all that crap, while if I pirate I typically get a drm-free version without any of the headache? I've actually pirated some software that I already own just because the DRM is so infuriating to deal with.
@@scarletfragment99 Except pirates will still circumvent protections, so when plugin companies use DRM they end up punishing honest paying customers while making a great case for pirates to continue pirating. Also DRM is really more about controlling the 'player' than preventing piracy, it's basically a form of rent seeking.
@@Bestmann3n but its in place because people were pirating anyway, before drm, drm was created because of pirates not the other way around, i can rationalize theft exactly the same way, i dont jack the store cause i dont want to pay, i simply dont have time to go through the line... Except thats not real its an excuse, i never heard someone use the defense in court, that they would have paid, but the line was too long... People rationalize their behavior, when really they are just criminals... Dealing with the bugs in pirated copies is more annoying then dealing with most drm, maybe specific drm, but then companies that dont use heavyweight drm, would not have pirated software, they do, except more..
An interesting point when discussing this with a Cuban friend is that even the "fairly priced" models from a first world point of view can be equal to a month's income in cuba. The new question is, is it fair to pirate a software when you're (intentionally or not) left out of the economical model? Great points in this video though, thank you for covering this
Yes this is exactly what I thought. I work for VFX industry and we have software that costs around 5K per year. Who on development countries can afford this?
I think the poorer you are (no matter why) the more justified you are in any kind of theft, even physical (though I would love it if people didn't steal from other people and instead mainly stole directly from corps, I know why that's impossible but still).
@@radiofloyd2359 Thing is when stealing from an individual it still causes direct harm in a way that stealing from a big corporation just doesn't. With a large corporation like Walmart their inventory management software has predicted inventory shrink for every line down to the fraction of a percentage point and they have priced items accordingly. Inventory shrink in this case includes theft it is literally the measure of what percentage of items brought in on the back end that will be lost before being sold whether due to spoilage, breakage, theft, or otherwise. You can get this sort of accuracy when you are selling millions of each item per month or whatever as the statistics tend to regress to the mean over very short time periods with such large sample sizes per time interval so models that will predict the fate of said inventory end up being surprisingly accurate. Granted this does mean everyone that can afford to pay is paying a fraction more but then the same is true when one of those paying customers accidently pulls down the jar next to the one they were buying and again this was all pretty much accounted for in advance because the risks can be modelled (eg the models know what products are at the highest risk of severe damage such as jars or glass bottles).
@@seraphina985 Yeah, stealing from people is pretty bad, but sometimes it can be necessary for the sake of survival. Sometimes they're just not close enough to a major market, sometimes it's whatever else... In our society stealing can be ethical or at least ethically neutral even when it's done directly to an individual, because unhappiness is less of a problem than death. And when it comes to stealing from corps, my position is pretty simple: no one should have millions or even billions of time more money than others. If someone has that much money/stock, they're exploiting the poor directly and unethically. It is, as such, ethical to undermine their business.
Not only thorough but so diverse. He's like the interdisciplinary music educationalist. It seems like that's what Benn's going for. And, if you are reading this Benn, thanks cause that's what education is really about; giving context to truth.
An important note: there are lots of pieces of Malware that can detect if they're running inside a VM and will play dead until they're running on real hardware. For example, the network interface cards usually say something like VMware Network Interface which makes it pretty trivial to find out! At the end of the day it is a judgement call you'll have to make, but you might do everything right and still be infected. This message was brought to you by the Copyright Holder's Union
Many modern antivirus programs run all new executables (unknown signature) in a sandbox for a few minutes while checking for suspicious behaviour. The software will run like normal and wait ~10 minutes until it's sure that it's free of the sandbox and no longer being closely analysed before it starts malicious activity.
That's why I run all my malware on a spare laptop from 2009 with a broken network card. No network, no spreading of the malware. Though it does get annoying to wipe the drive and reinstall windows over and over again lol
I pirated flashbulb a looooong time ago (2002 or somewhere around there). Back then I swore you MUST HAVE been another secret moniker for Richard D James, because I loved Aphex Twin so much, and your music at that time hit all of the right notes. Then, around 2008 or so I came into a pretty sizeable payout and wanted to give back, so I purchased yours, and a bunch of other artists music from iTunes. I had THOUGHT I was paying you for your music back then. Hopefully, I didn't pay those scammers D:
Sounds like you did :( it’s made me wonder how many indie artists this has happened to. I’m lucky I liked to buy physical CDs of my favourite albums and then Bandcamp came along, so my iTunes purchases were mostly from big labels.
I used to pirate music software for years. But as the hobby grew and my personal income grew I could afford to buy the software instead. If I could not have pirated software in the beginning that would mean I would never be able to get into this hobby, and end up with 100% bought software. It's just more convenient to have the license in the end. So I would say pirated software was the best advertisement music software companies could ever ask for. The subscription model is a bit worrying though. As a hobby musician that make 0 dollars from the music, I will not be dragged into a subscription service for 10 different services to be able to work on music. That is not sustainable. I want to buy the software when there is a sale, and then own that license for life. The only subscription service that I do use is Splice. But that is just a more convenient way of buying sample packs, so I think its fine. But its not workable solution for hobbyist to have several subscriptions to different software to be able to do the hobby. If the companies only want to target professionals, fine, but they will probably lose a large portion of the hobbyist.
Yeah, also back when I was young, there was not much quality, but cheap or even affordable (for a young person) music software available, well, before FL Studio (and that I bought back then... and which I moved onwards later because of many reasons, which is a whole another topic). Now it's a whole another ball park. Every DAW has an entry level license and on top of that there are plethora of insane deals going on all the time and not to even mentioning the quality of some free audio software... and man something like iPad and the software it has as well nowadays, it's mind blowing really. Also there are way, way more affordable hardware nowadays. But, would the young me pirate today? Hard to say, but most likely some... I think it's just how youngsters roll. But as soon as I graduated from college and got a real job, I legit deleted all the pirated stuff I had, games included and stopped pirating EVERYTHING, like hitting a wall. To me it just was something that I had been waiting for: the day I have money to buy a legitimate license to something I want to use. For me subscriptions are ok, like Benn also said, if the service is good for the money. And as long as there are different options for the subscription plans. Like: I don't necessarily want to pay from everything some company has and so on.
yea, this also applies in other areas, like in video games some companies are so uptight about people streaming their game. claiming it ruins it for everyone, yet. there have been games I never would of thought about buying but I did because I started off watching a stream, but then go frustrated at the person steaming it for not exploring places I wanted to see or sometimes they'd keep talking over the game. or that after watching a good ways in I was like this game is a lot better then I thought, and I won't have to wait. and bam I bought the game.
sadly, you're wrong. subscription models time and time again prove their appeal to masses. afaik, today an average US citizen has like a dozen or two subscriptions in his pocket, and two or five more will likely not be bothersome. and someone could say it is even a good thing since for example a subscription plan for devices would eliminate incentive for planned obsolescence, which is a good thing for literally everyone involved. i personally like to own my stuff. i may be a dinosaur from a days long gone, but i don't need nor want (nor really understand) constant updates. i hate having to adjust to "new and improved" lack of features and constant drift of UI down the shitter. i've had a lot of experience of having to rollback (sometimes through a really wonky path) a bullshit update that made an app nigh unusable.
@@swancrunch There will always be those that subscriptions don't work for if the wealth gap remains. I had some money I inherited once and I spent it on music gear and rent. I'd been pirating for years but then I could suddenly buy stuff, which means stability. Fast forward 15 years and everything is subscriptions. I barely make it hand to mouth every month and sure as shit cannot afford "a dozen subscriptions." That's why I'm so grateful that I own software from back when I could, no problems with updates cuz the big ones cost money. I'm several versions of cubase and reason behind but I don't care. If they'd been subscriptions I wouldn't have them at all. I have zero subscriptions. I borrow a friend's Netflix and HBO. I own my software or I write off the company. Nice knowing you Adobe, good thing CS6 is still viable for basic work.
Spent a lot of time hoarding pirated audio software in the late 90s and early 00s. Option paralysis slowed me down a lot, but trained me to focus less on the details until I was sure the bigger picture made sense for me. I also vowed to buy all the pirated software I had actually used when I could afford it... Fast-forward 20 years and everything I use is "legal". The original option paralysis is back, but now with less guilt! >_
I work for a software developer in the VFX industry and we face all these issues as well. We introduced a free non-commercial edition that allowed people to learn the software and then later 'Indie' limited commercial versions that were geared for freelancers and small studios. I don't know to what extent this has reduced piracy but I'm sure that it has reduced the barrier of entry for many.
There's a non commercial version of Houdini? Ohh, interested. My first guess was going to be blackmagic design, but their free stuff isn't non commercial afaik.
Adobe is taking the piss now. They buy Substance painter, so I think oh great I'm moving into 3D work so my expensive Adobe account might have some new found value. To my lack of surprise, Adobe has now separated their 3D apps into an additional subscription model basically doubling the monthly cost. As of Photoshop 2022 there is also a warning screen saying that the 3D functions it can do aren't working well enough so they're removing them! Where is the reward for long term customers? It is easy to see why people are moving to Affinity apps for 1 time purchase price, and also Black Magic DaVinci Resolve & Blender that are essentially free. Great video Benn!
Affinity is spectacular. Admittedly its copy/paste workflow took a bit of headscratching on my behalf, but once i got my head around it, I have very few complaints.
@@shayneoneill1506Affinity tools are pretty nice, and they sell a bundle with their trio of program. I prefer Pixelmator for most of my image editing though, because of the neat ML tools. And now RetroBatch (a tool by the people behind Acord, another decent image editing app) added ML stuff, so there's no lack of cheap options from decent people. Substance Editor etc. going to Adobe pissed me off. I absolutely detest renting my software, but not all open source tools are good enough :(
They were ridiculous before that. I had CS6 that I bought online, and after years of use, well after I could have done anything about it, they revoked my license, saying the seller I bought it from had pulled some BS apparently? Considering that they themselves verified my account, that really seems like a THEM problem to me.
I was a music producer with all-pirated software for years. Some years ago, I experienced exactly what Benn says near the end: I had tons of tools but knew them only superficially (except Cubase, which ironically I had paid a license). So I got rid of all the stuff I couldn't buy or get a free version. I installed bundled plugins from my soundcard and midi controllers. I searched for free alternatives (eg. George Yohng's W1 Limiter instead of the Waves L1). I got to work only with what I had and work creatively instead of downloading another Fabfilter plugin. That said, these days I'm thinking about the thing at least for the Waves plugins. I bought several thinking they were forever; well, not. There is a limit of "reinstalls" and an installer must be downloaded, which doesn't work on all systems... so it actually makes it harder and challenging to own the plugins than to get a cracked bundle from a friend.
Having lots of plugins from different vendors is almost as bad as having to keep track of your cracked installers. Most installers have a limited number of activations and you havre to get in touch with the company to reset that counter and they can theoretically refuse to do it even if I haven't experienced that yet. After a computer crash I hit those activation limits for a handful of companies at once and it took almost a week to get everything up and running, luckily for me my daily income doesn't depend on my music software suites working.
for me it wasn't a "too much tools" because I used like a handful of plugins but it was more like "I'm tired of going to shady websites and not being able to update either my DAW/plugins or my OS". I'm almost at the point where I have option paralysis because I have to many plugins that I bought; because those bundles on sale are usually pretty cheap.
@@valdir7426 Option paralysis is such a frustrating issue. I'd love to get rid of all but the bare minimum of music gear and plugins to avoid that problem but I know I'd regret it eventually.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 for a time I tried to work with only ableton integrated plugins, but I got tempted by arturia stuff and I was on a spending roll with hardware. It takes some times to find the right tools. Sadly the ones I used the most for ten years (tassman and symptohm) became obsolete on modern systems at some point, so I had to find others (AAS CV-1 with poly could easily replace tassman for me if it gets here).
The funny thing with option paralysis after pirating audio software is that in 2022 there is so much freeware & open source audio software (DAWs & plugins) available now that you could easily spend all your spare time exploring all of the free stuff. It's even got to a point where some pirate sites now offer torrents or DDLs of malware-free freeware/FOSS software just for convenience.
The real convenience comes when you switch to Linux and install your audio software through your package manager. Now every time you update your system you also update all your audio stuff. Still waiting for a FOSS daw that clicks with me though...
Piracy isn't theft, it's copyright infringement. Theft is a criminal act. Copyright infringement is a civil matter. Those people who want you to think Piracy is theft, are the people who have a large stake in the business of selling music/film/software. If you're not in that business, and you think piracy is theft... why are you on their leg?
I should mention that copyright infringement actually can be a criminal act in some contexts in the US. It's not purely a civil matter in all situations, just most
Thank you! And our copyright system is badly broken when it comes to music. We've shot ourselves in the foot so badly and limited a generations worth of kids from fair use artistic expression as we've stumbled into the horrendous monetization system we have now. Just as before, most artists and producers are underpaid, but now our soundscape is constricted and using pop music for self expression or just freely sharing is absurdly difficult. As a result we get some of the worst possible choices of public domain garbage shoved down our throats constantly for users just picking the easiest option and completely shriveling their creative ability with music if they can't basically make their own... It's a mess. It's so stupid it hurts. This problem will NEVER be fixed until we make proper and fierce priority for "fair use" and educational use of media. All media should be considered fair use until proven otherwise, the onus should be on the claimant to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that infringing use isn't transformative. Sounds difficult for artists/studios to make claims? Yes. Exactly. It should be.
Hi Benn , I think you could mention Reaper. It never locks, there is only a nag screen waiting for few seconds to start, there is no single reason to pirate it :) When I used it in daily based I simply bought a license . The best part is that I paid , got my serial number and instantly worked without any crappy authentication system . IMO it's the best anti-piracy method
reaper is the just the best music software ever. still mixing in it today. used for years with the nag screen until that „you have been using reaper for seventeenthousand hours got too embarrassing.
2 года назад
Personally, I never got to the end of the 60 day trial period before I purchased it. I think the best part about their model is that you pay less when not earning very much from your music and then pay more when you do, but no matter if you pay a lot or a little less or even nothing you still get the same software. This type of licensing should be done a whole lot more.
@@toslinked agreed. mine has 1700+ hours and I always think to myself that I'll buy it as soon can come off the 50 or so bucks lol... but ive been doing this with winrar for like 20 years 😅
Oh, one more data point that might not apply as much today, but an acquaintance of mine worked in the VFX industry, where at the time, Maya was the #1 3D modeling software. He told me that of the dozens of guys he'd worked with, sometimes on major Hollywood productions, every single one of these 3D programmer guys - including himself - had started learning Maya by pirating it
Great video as always but two things I wish you talked about more: 1. Preservation of software/media 2. Software/media distribution, pricing, and language problems I've got old software that's not possible to buy anymore and the only versions available online are packed with malware. The software works fine and in a sandbox/VM the malware does nothing but waste a _tiny_ bit of CPU/RAM. This is also the case for some unofficial software translations (eg. Jap -> Eng). I personally can read Japanese okay but the text formatting is completely broken (even with Japanese system locale or AppLocale) so it's all nonsense kana/kanji/squares without the translation.
"if you ever pirated my music... thanks for listening" I love you so much. been listening since the mid 00's, as a poor young teen. I got a hold of Aaron Funk's soulseek user ID and had a short conversation with him back in the day. told him I had no money but love his music and the ability to pirate it. so I did. not a very gracious thing to say, but I was young and dumb. he told me that if he saw my mom in the street, he'd have the ability to punch her in the face, but it wouldn't make it right. a diametric perspective that I love just as well.
As someone who pirated fruity loops 3 back in the early 00s as well, I never would've pirated reason 1.0.1 - and then I'd never have gotten into sound design theory. (I own reason 9.5 and cubase pro now, and actually understand synthesizers lol). Thanks, Hotline! Or was that gone by then end of the 90s? I don't even remember where I got the software back then, there were so many p2p apps around the same time. More likely it was soulseek or limewire or equivalent.
Here in Chile, the former president of the “Sociedad de derecho de autor”, composer Fernando Ubiergo had to resign because he was caught doing a presentation about copyright with a pirated copy of Microsoft PowerPoint.
For me one upside I found getting back into music and being a Linux user for other reasons is it's really easy to avoid software piracy and learn to make do with what you have. With out as many options that are native (VST bridges are also an option but they bring their own problems and hurdles to deal with) I've at least learned how to maximize the utility of the stuff that is Linux native I have installed or owned a lot more. It has kept me out of the hype cycles around new plugins and made me explore options for some things I would of never tried otherwise. Like I don't think I would of grown an interest in things like Pure Data and C Sound as much as I have and gone down the rabbit hole that is basically designing my own DSP code. Plus as a younger musician it's caused me to discover the joy of dealing with hardware synths and the quirks they come with in a way a lot of other people my age I've talked to online never really have as they have stayed ITB usually almost entirely.
Yeah, there's pretty good free software available for music these days... and hardware is a lot of fun. So that's what I use. I don't want to go anywhere near proprietary software rentals, whether pirated or not, when I could instead use physical instruments and free software. I hope the future will be about sharing instead of subscriptions... and collaboration instead of competition. The users and developers really should be on the same "side" instead of fighting each other.
I'm a new Linux user and use Reaper. Finding plug ins that work native is hard, and finding hardware that works is also a bit hard. But in the end. I'm super happy with linux and how stable it is, not to mention with my older computers it now runs faster than ever.
@@oreos3174 Limitations also breed frustration. When I want to do something and my tools won't let me, it typically makes me lose motivation and look for better tools. Less isn't always more.
@@ToyKeeper That can definitely be true. But likely you rely on those tools because you do not understand what those tools are actually doing. It’s all abstracted away for you. That can be great, but if you want to do something and truly understand what you are doing, less is more.
Piracy kills the smaller software developers, not Microsoft and Adobe... If the option for a user is "pay a little for simpler software" or "pay nothing for the market leader" then piracy mostly benefits the market leaders. The reason is that smaller software can't compete with free, and thus the market leader has fewer competitors. Meanwhile, large customers don't pirate, and pays for the leader.
That's a very astute observation. The incentive to pirate software from larger corporations because it's just a drop in the bucket means there's naturally going to be more free or cracked versions of software from the big fish. People with the know-how won't feel as compelled as often to crack a smaller developer's software because it's more difficult to justify. That means, generally, the free option is going to be right next to other software that both has to be cheap and outperforming in features in order to compete with the big fish. Yet, simultaneously, the smaller fish can never make their work cheap enough because there's literally free competition and nobody would want to make the work of small fish free except for the smaller fish that made it. How can the product of a smaller fish offer the satisfaction of "punching up" to a potential future consumer base? The big fish is generally already in an advantaged position regardless of the scenario, that's life, but it's interesting to think about such a complex thing. I'm poor, I get why people can't afford to even risk training their mind to be any less frugal than it already is, but there's people out there who can definitely afford the stuff they pirate and then some. People in that latter position thinking that they're "punching up" are really just helping clear the market of any other competition.
Exactly!! That's what I also always say. Why e. g. are there nearly no proper Photoshop alternatives? Because everybody who can't or doesn't want to afford it pirates it instead of buying a cheaper product which then can't grow because lack of funding.
They don't kill anyone , they adapt to their revenue. Besides MS & adobe were/are the most pirated sw in history but you could say they're not exactly dead! You're not born MS , although a monopoly gives you great power you can fight it if you choose to, because it takes more than one to sustain it. There's a fairly recent documentary (i think German funded, in the US i seriously doubt it could play on national tv) were various state agencies in Europe swap MS products with free open code and have the same productivity as before saving tenths of millions of dollars. They also increase their security because more code & features create security problems so "more features" is not always what you want. To avoid this you use linux. MS current state of affairs is about lobbying more than anything.
@@mudi2000a thats a poor example Im afraid. There are a huge number of Photoshop alternatives. There are whole industry sectors (such as mobile app UI design) where Photoshop was once the "industry standard" and is now barely a historical footnote.
Great video again! One could argue that pirating built some of the biggest software empires. Having all these pirated copies of Windows and MS Word on personal computers meant that people had the knowledge on the software so when they went to work for a legit company they chose that software and generated massive revenues for Microsoft.
I used to listen to your music a lot about 6 years ago, now discovering you as person and bing watching all your videos, so well researched and so well presented arguments on so many topics, holy shit. :)
I'd very much appreciate you try making a record (song/EP/LP) using Linux and libre audio software, and then publish a video with your experience with it. I think It would do a great service to many people who do not have the money and/or would not succumb to the social pressures of using what almost everybody uses, and also not having to go through all the uncertainty and hazards of warez.
I'm happy you touched upon my main pet peeve about software; people never diving deep enough to truly learn or appreciate software, instead just getting the next flavour of the month.
When I was growing up in India software piracy was inescapable. Many people around me would gladly pay for the programs they used but couldn't because an international bank card was hard to get and Indian versions of services like PayPal just didn't exist. I'm glad those days are in the past but they still make for an interesting case study for so many places in the world.
This was amazing. Well done! I’ve gone over the ethics of this a few times and I almost feel like there’s some subtle but important differences between someone just downloading a thing and someone hosting and sharing the same material.
To summarise this video: vote for the pirate party (if you don't have one in your election, find like-minded people in your community, found one and apply to join the Pirate Parties International)
Benn. Fan for life here. You got me with that HTML file after pirating a copy of Red Extensions back in the day. I even fanboyed out at a NYE show in Madison WI where afterward you lamented about the type of music you played because it was a rave and you didnt get a big crowd for your set. I think part of what I really like is that I feel you're the type of person I would hang out with in real life. Keep on keepin on, I'll be listening!
Amazing video, Benn! The conclusion was on point, I also feel exactly the same whenever I buy any piece of software. I just felt you could have mentioned regional pricing when you cited your clever software licensing ideas. Regional pricing is a big reason so many people outside the US/Canada/Europe/Australia bubble still pirate software. Take Steam as an example, how much they profited after introducing regional pricing in places like South America, Russia, etc, and how much people started to use its services instead of realying on pirated resources.
Great video Benn. As a whole, I'd love it if the industry could become more defined by accessible (financially and sane licensing) software than the lock-in "industry standard" dinosaur vendors of yesteryear.
i remember before i tried making my own music i had the fl studio demo version and then tried to pirate it aswell as many other DAWs like ableton and pro tools. as funny as it sounds i didnt even succeed cracking any music software and that got me so frustrated because i spent so much time figuering out how to do that. so i gave up and didnt even consider paying for a DAW. a few months later i attented a sound engineering course for 1 semester and in their studio they used Reaper. so we had to download and learn Reaper in order to finish the course. i havent heard about this DAW before and to my surprise it was free. there is of course a paid version for 60 bucks but even if you dont purchase it you can still use the whole DAW. of course the advise to do so after 30 days and i recommend it too, in the end 60 dollars is still "nothing" compared to other software. so yeah i dont know what point im trying to make here, i just really enjoyed this video and it brought back some memories of me giving up on the dream of making music because i was too stupid to crack software and then few months later finding the free and most perfect DAW for me.
When i was a teenager i pirated stuff, then i grew up and got money and it was easier to just purchase. Would never blame someone for pirating something tbh
Brilliant video, astonishingly well researched. It's interesting that you mentioned The Orchard. In 2003 I produced, wrote, and directed a short film which starred Thomas Jay Ryan and the late Adrienne Shelly. When I put up some clips on RU-vid, The Orchard made a copyright claim. This thing was copyrighted with the US Copyright office, WGA registration, SAG movie, etc. etc. I got it straightened out, but why did it happen? The only answer I can come up with is that The Orchard just claims stuff willy-nilly and waits to see if anybody objects. The other wrinkle was that in my paid job as a publicist I often worked with The Orchard. So go figure. Keep up the good work!
It’s videos like these that make me happy I’m a patron. Excellent video. I wanted to add just in case it hasn’t been brought up that there are certain malware that try to determine if they are ran within a VM. It’s a little harder to do, but it can happen so even a VM isn’t 100% when running pirated software.
this is the first video of yours i have come across and it blew me away with your vigor while still being entertaining and digestible. I will certainly be sticking around! :3
12:15 INDEED, i was a poor student in Russia when i pirated FL back in ~2005, and when i stupidly checked for updates, the installer compressed my entire FL Program Files folder with all my miserable projects into a password protected archive! I was furious!!! Then I pirated another software to crack ZIP file passwords and i restored my projects but it took a while.
My problem with PC apps is that an app that does 1 thing normally costs $30 whereas an app on Android that does 1 thing normally costs $1 to $3. If your software is going to cost too much, I'll just find a workaround: either use it without paying or find another software that does the same thing for free. Now on Android everyone's jumping on subscription based service which is just terrible. Do you want a photo editing software? pay us a subscription of $5/month because you want to edit a couple of photos here and there.
The preservation aspect is super important to me. Coming from the video game sphere, something like 90% of old games are lost to time, never to be publically or officially documented. It's a huge loss for culture and the history of the medium. If a company doesnt give you the option to have, for free or for money, a piece of software or other media, then piracy is the only way to preserve it for the future.
Thankfully i learned about the world of Free Software, which not only because of been free, but also for respecting privacy and freedom, i would like to see you talking about these topics someday.
If the creator of a product is dead, i don't know if me buying it gets money to their family or something. A lot of the time like you said, it wouldn't even go to the artist so the family is definitely out of the question
FeankJavC is a pretty famous example of someone who openly pirated music developement software (FL Studio) but did a large amount of free advertisement in his videos. Made a pretty large splash in the vaporwave and similar microgenres in the community. However despite what amounts to a 10 minute long FL Studio commercial getting people like me interested in music Production, they kinda just nuked him.
Hi Benn! I discovered your channel with the Behringer video and subscribed since that point. Just wanted to thank you for the amount of research and insights that go into your work. You are an amazing communicator and in my opinion you strike a great balance of information, opinion and humour. Always in a respectful way and driven by samples and citing sources. Not this common on channels of this genre/sector. Keep up the awesome work, we'll be here to support you and your channel! Have a great day!
My take : 1. Use free & open source software when possible 2. Pirate software from big & scummy companies 3. If you have money buy from small & honest companies 4. If you're broke (specially if you come from a developing country), pirate away ! (but be safe)
Steal from people you think are “scummy”? Bullshit. It’s still crime and you are still a low thief. Someone works there, some regular person. You are stealing from them.
@@PaulLembo lmao no. First, I don't give a fuck about what is "crime". Consuming drugs was a crime and now it's not, did the ethics of drug consumption suddenly change?!? As for your "stealing from the little man" take, the developer probably already got paid regardless. Those losing the money are the business owners who, I say, succinctly, fuck them.
Great video, well done. It's a fustercluck of a topic, and that's before you get into what a cesspool of corruption and legal bullying the media world is.
I have mixed feelings about piracy but I definitely hate the spread of "creative" as a noun. I know the horse is out of the barn and lots of people see it as a neutral or positive thing but I still associate it with the advertising industry and that's not positive. I used to work in a corporate "creative services" department, so I get having a business-speak euphemism for people who do vaguely-artsy things but are in no way artists, but seeing actual artists embrace it kind of breaks my heart.
this was a great video. I truly enjoyed it and watched it all the way thru at normal speed. Thank you for your carefully thought out and presented thoughts. I can't say I agree with every take. I can say I was very moved to thought over each take. Fantastic work. BTW - I have never seen any other video you have done. But that is likely to change.
Great video as usual :) I remember getting a cracked Fruity Loops 6 from a friend more than a decade ago. It was the start of a passion that never left me. Without piracy I would probably never have discovered electronic music and began to compose myself. Also, it made possible for me to discover an entire galaxy of music I would never have otherwise, as I did not have the money to buy CDs, especially without any way of discovering new bands before buying. So yep, eMule and limewire played a big part in my teen :D
Thank you for making this video, absolutely love your channel. Being from Thailand, I have to jump through a lot of hurdles to avoid piracy and give creators money. For example, if I wanted to purchase some banjo instructional booklets (from certain websites, not all), I need to get on a VPN, create a virtual U.S. credit card, find a U.S. forwarding shipping address that will receive the items, have them re-ship it to me, etc. Because for some reason they won’t ship to Thailand. I could just as easily find a torrent for it. The same for other purchases or streaming services, I need to go through 14 steps before it’s set up. Anyway, my point is, most people would just torrent it, and you’re totally right, it’s mainly a matter of convenience separating torrents from legitimate purchases. Sorry about the rant, awesome video!!
Benn, have you ever considered doing a video exploring Renoise as a viable DAW? It seems to fit very comfortably within the criteria you've established multiple times with regards to 'What makes FL Studio good' vs. Live or ProTools while running less than $100. Their purchase/upgrade model is a very interesting variant on what FL Studio does; instead of free lifetime upgrades you have access to a free major version. Currently they're on version 3.4 and if you buy a copy today for 75 USD or 68 EUR, you get free updates until version 4.4, and since buying my copy a few years ago my upgrade window window still hasn't crossed over the threshold. Renoise, as a whole, has a very strong value proposition when compared to other DAWs. The only features I feel it lacks compared to others is Clip Launching and debatably audio tracks. Exempting that, it offers the Tracker workflow, is built around an intimidatingly powerful sampler at its core, and offers a level of power & polish I have simply not found with anything else at its price point. This is all without mentioning the level of timing precision that it provides compared to Piano Roll based DAWs. I've certainly not seen the level of success that you have, but I've built a tidy following over the years, and would be happy to contribute or offer my thoughts if you ever choose to take a look at it.
There’s always been a big conversation around rhythm games and piracy, since sharing custom maps for songs include an mp3 or ogg of that track. That said, if it weren’t for the Lawn Wake tracks I played on Stepmania back in the day I probably wouldn’t have ever discovered the great music you put out as early as I did, and for that I’m super grateful.
I absolutely hate the subscription model. Totally unacceptable. It's like a constant drain of money. I'd pay 10x more one time, and be done with it, be able to use the software indefinitely. A free trial in this case is justified.
The only music subscription I ever used was the splice pay-to-own for serum and the d16 plugins. That in combination with a bought license of ableton was my way into proper music production. I initially started on the mentioned free version of FL and it told me one thing: I don't like FL at all. Still I am grateful for being able to try it out and test if music production is something for me. Also I work as a software developer so I know both sides of the coin. I pretty much never pirate any software nowadays because I know the work that goes into it. Illegally downloading a song from the internet does financial damage to artists but the scale is not the same. There are good artists that can create awesome music in a day or a week but you will never do that with software. If someone asked me to write a VST for some purpose individually I would charge them at least 150k€ for a year of work. That money needs to come somewhere. Maintainance also costs a fortune and here subscription models can really shine. Would you pay for something that suddenly does not run on your system anymore? Well no and devs will fix that asap to not lose customers. If you already bought the whole thing you are screwed. A product needs to be easily available for a fair price and the developers need a reason to keep it well maintained.
The only time I would say piracy is completely justifiable, or even unavoidable, is when companies axe, or stop selling software. Like old games from Nintendo, or old software from decades past that is obsolete. In those cases, archival and piracy is a must! But I largely agree with what you said overall.
I bought FL about two years ago to pressure myself into actually commiting to learn making music, before that I used the test version and tbh, it really helped, having that limit of one session to work on a project was motivating and the crushing guilt of having spent 600 bucks on the all plugins edition even more so. 10/10 would throw myslf into financial turmoil again, but I don't judge pirates, Private Property is cringe. Fuck Capitalism!
"Private property is cringe" I highly doubt you'd be saying this if you actually experienced communism first hand lol But I get it, I was young once. It was fun to dress up and LARP as a radical to make myself feel like I figured out the simple solution to complex global geopolitics.
My journey began listening to Railway Relay Part 5 ...13.00min... Since then I never stopped listening to everything you released..All purchased now via groupees...bandcanp too...if I ever win lottery you get 10 mln £ ...and I'm not joking.. The best collection of music I have ever listened to ...I doubt I will ever got bored relistening all you discography! All the best ! Great to be your patreon too!!!
Well said. This applies to nearly every expensive production tool I have ever used, and quite a few stuffy specialized "enterprise" suites as well. This includes cracking software to get around licensing bugs in legally licensed programs, yes even engineering firms do this. Regarding option paralysis, people should try to use what works best for them, but at least try learning how to use what you can get you hands on first, the shiny locked-in tool will not create for you. Far too many try to spend their way out of learning and practice.
As an electronic music producer living in a third world country where people just live on software piracy, my story is this, I make music as a hobby, and pirated a lot of software when I was a kid now as an adult and working in IT, I see the damage that not paying for intelectual property can cause, especially on audio companies where there is a limited amount of people working on a budget just because they love audio, so even though I dont make money with music, I do buy my software legally and my advice for other people when they ask me how I do it, is the following, start small, I bought cubase elements, then artist then pro, wait for summer sales, for plugins you can also subscribe to their mailing list there is always good sales, I payed like 5$ for trash and a ozone elements one time, I bought serum from splice as rent to own, it worked great, and now I'm looking forward to buy bitwig the same way, also the free options are not as they were 15 years ago when I started making music, so, right now, as it is, I think there is no excuse for using pirated software, and if you still think you should not pay for software because you can't touch it and do whatever you want with it, just go dawless, and let's see what is most expensive.
piracy is for kids wanting to play, then they grown up, and when they have a job they'll naturally buy those softwares for real. it's a natural process.
Really stellar video. I dont know anyone who likes Adobe's subscription model. I grew up in the Apple ecosystem and its far too expensive for myself now. However I am amazed that my ancient copies of Image ready and Photoshop still run on windows 10. Lets say many of the commentors and musicians were not even born when these version came out. I almost went with FLStudio but I opted to dig into Reaper as my main DAW and have no regrets, brilliant software that runs well on pretty much any platform and the cost is more than reasonable As someone commented below there is no good reason to pirate software as many free and opensource apps rival and often go beyond the commercial offerings these days.
I spent a long time in the gaming industry. Not making games directly but building the systems used to run a game studio. Things like studio to studio VPNs so everyone could work together. Building and managing the Wiki that all the games teams used to work on ideas from the early beginnings of a new release to the game hitting the shelf at gamestop 8^). Or, a system that managed all of the image, video, animation, Maya Script, 3d model, and audio assets that went into all of the games. So, I have a pretty in person understanding of the economics of running a studio. There is a reason that when a game studio stops winning on subscriber/sales numbers they dont take long to fall apart. Its because the quantity of money being bled only gets replaced by making new kit games. Seeing how that works, I got really uncomfortable with piracy particularly of media stuff. Movies and TV are not just actors, writers and directors there is an army of craft services, gaffers, camera folks, assistants, project managers, audio guys, electricians, carpenters, painters, the costume department the props department and more. Not pirating is a way to express some respect for the very necessary contributions they are making. As for software, if it is so good you feel you need to be using it. Then, it must also be worth paying for. If it is, not find the free alternative. Also, the whole torrents == spyware is a thing that is not really that much worth the effort.
I have a strong aversion to copyrights and patents. I think everything should be Open Source. Copy rights and Patents stifle development, particularly patents. If you invent something in a no patent environment, you have the opportunity to get the item to market first, that is a huge advantage, but it doesn't stop someone else adding or improving it in a future development. If the Item is patented, that's it, development is halted(except by the Patent holder). Can you not see how limiting that is. I don't agree that the inventor should get exclusive rights, what they get is first bite of the cherry. We humans do best when we co-operate, two heads are better than one, many hands make light work etc. Patents and Copy rights stifle co-operation.
Damn. Well done! I've developed the habit of always searching for 'GPL softwarex' anytime I'm looking for something new. It's served me well. Community recommendations for small developer software is also great. I wouldn't have found/learned Reaper without it. Your white button up with the printed pattern was tight. Nice.
I think that since GarageBand is pre installed on every single iOS and MacOS device it might have the edge in terms of install base right now but I agree that FL’s licensing scheme has always been the way to go and I find it hard to believe not more companies haven’t adopted something similar. Even apple is going that route. Since getting rid of the “X” suffix for Logic and Final Cut it’s highly unlikely current users will ever have to pay for them again.
I'm like a PS5 game away from paying off Studio One and had finishing buying Serum late last year, splice is the whole ass reason I have had the peace of mind
You make some of the very best content Benn. I don’t see many content creators in the music production side of things that really dig in to investigate down to the nitty gritty. You pick some of the best topics for subjects or ur content. Truly made a fan outta me, I’d be happy hop on that patreon. Thanks for all ur efforts & sharing ur thoughts & knowledge. Good luck with that new pc build. 🤘🙃👍
thank you for the video, very thorough. just a thought i had while listening: '1000$ might lead to a person justifying the cost'... is a slow move towards the slippery slope to the sunk cost fallacy. on the flip the line about trying all-the-things can very easily lead to the effect of not getting anything done, absolutely true too.
Nobody on my Music Tech degree 22 years ago would have completed the course without pirated versions of Cubase VST, Waves and Hyperprism plugins, and Cool Edit Pro. These days though there are very few excuses as we are blessed with many freeware options for audio, photo, video, and office software. You could run Reaper, Audacity, Google Photos, GIMP, and Google Docs / Libre Office and not be held back. There's been some amazing free VSTi's and plugins in recent years too.
As much of an issue as pirating may be in the Western world, that's not where most piracy happens. The whole of my country runs on pirated Windows, because it simply isn't possible for us to pay a quarter to half as much again for software as for a laptop. (Going off $200 estimate). We don't get paid in dollars, so we can't spend in dollars either.
