Software piracy and rip off Britain.

deanos

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johnnyboyrebel

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

I wasn't too sure whether this should go here or in the techie bord, abut as it's only a general vent, I decided on here.


I recently installed a trial version of Corel DVD pro on my laptop, and this trial period has just finished, so I was looking around at the price to purchase the full version.

It is available for download directly from Corel.co.uk for £59.99 but if you are not in the UK and you want it from Corel.com, it is only $49.99 (or about £33.30).

The difference in buying the DVD version is even worse.
Amazon.co.uk charge £53.76 but on Amazon.com it is $39.99 (or about £26.66).

I realise that VAT will make up 20% of the price difference, but with the UK prices being double what is being charged in the USA for an identical product, I can see why the software companies state that there is so much piracy of their products.
Maybe if the UK prices were a bit more realistic, people wouldn't take the risk with dodgy fake software.

I have just ordered a copy of this, along with a few other items from Amazon.com (I know a few people who travel between the UK & the USA on a regular basis), so although it will take a couple of weeks before I receive it, no UK company nor the UK government will get anything in the way of profit or tax from me.
If the price was more reasonable, I wouldn't have minded keeping my money with UK retailers

As some said, Adobe are the worst for this. I recently had to purchase Adobe Creative Suite Design and Web Premium (a package of every Adobe product). Cost is around £1600 in UK. Adobe's US site selling around £8/900. Its ridiculous.

I say download what you can for free, don't let the UK government rip you off like this (this was for business use so had to be bought

Also don't fall for the 'everything downloaded freely is dodgy' thing as it just isn't true. Most downloads are direct clones/rips off the original discs so just like you would buy and with serial activation being hacked as soon as a product is released you would nptice no difference from installling this or a bought version.

Just download from the right places (don't use kazaa or rapidshare :rotfl:)

ThumbRemote

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

I say download what you can for free, don't let the UK government rip you off like this (this was for business use so had to be bought

So as well as advocating theft, you clearly have no idea whatsoever about how pricing works.

I can just imagine the cabinet meeting where they agreed the price that all software products would be sold at :rotfl:

Nilrem

Perelandra wrote: »

Haven't MS's prices always been pegged to the Euro? Certainly their price lists were euro denominated when I used to be a software buyer, but maybe that's changed in the last 5 years.

IIRC the UK had it's pricing pegged to the dollar seperate from the Euro side of it, but recently they have announced a change so they will be more in line with the Euro pricing.
I can't remember if it's all MS stuff, or only for bulk licensing though (it's possibly retail has already been set to the Euro).

I'm not too bothered about it at the moment, I bought a few spare copies of Windows 7 at the pre-order pricing, which worked out surprisingly well (I bought a copy for each of our machines that was due to be built that year, and a couple of spares).
I think that was the first time I'd ever had every machine in the house running the same version of Windows.

johnnyboyrebel

ThumbRemote wrote: »

So as well as advocating theft, you clearly have no idea whatsoever about how pricing works.

I can just imagine the cabinet meeting where they agreed the price that all software products would be sold at :rotfl:

I revel in people like you taking literally every word I say for granted. Clearly I did not mean that you numpty :j

Hermione_Granger

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

I revel in people like you taking literally every word I say for granted. Clearly I did not mean that you numpty :j

I think that the numpty is the person who types something that they don't mean and then expects others to realise this.

I say download what you can for free, don't let the UK government rip you off like this (this was for business use so had to be bought

If you thought that it was the manufacturers ripping people off, then state this.
How are people expected to know that you didn't actually mean what you typed unless they are mind readers?

Azari

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

I revel in people like you taking literally every word I say for granted. Clearly I did not mean that you numpty :j

If anyone is a numpty, it's you.

Your post clearly implied that you thought stealing was the best option and that you somehow blamed the government for the pricing policy of a foreign, private, company.

If you embarrass yourself by posting something that indicates both stupidity and dishonesty, trying to pretend that you didn't mean it (and that readers were somehow supposed to magically know that) will rarely get you out of the hole you have dug for yourself.

ThumbRemote

johnnyboyrebel wrote: »

I revel in people like you taking literally every word I say for granted. Clearly I did not mean that you numpty :j

As others have already said, your post included the line "I say download what you can for free, don't let the UK government rip you off like this". This clearly suggests software piracy, and indicates you think the UK government are involved in ripping you off.

I can only apologise that I didn't see the hidden meaning in the text, where you actually meant "I think I'll have a McDonalds for tea, possibly a Big Mac meal".

You see, the difficulty is that when you write your message, people read what you've actually said. They don't get the completely different meaning you had in your head but were unable to express to anyone else.

George_Michael

DavidT wrote: »

Shaun, just a thought. In the past when I've bought Corel stuff I've gone straight to their American site and downloaded it from there which is much cheaper than downloading from their UK site.

Does this still work?
Last year, I wanted to buy a download of Coreldraw, so to save money (about £200), I went to the Corel.com website.
They must do an IP address check because the site knew that I was in the UK and I kept getting redirected to Corel.co.uk to make the purchase.

AdamJK_2

Have you tried looking around for any free programs up to the job? It's surprising just how many community-sourced programs are out there that are every bit as good, if not better in some respects, to commercial counterparts.

I think the general gist of this thread comes down to companies sticking with their outdated model of distribution rights. The same product is essentially sold by different vendors in different regions (i.e. North America, Europe, Asia) at wildly different prices. If the companies/rights holders were to take a more global view and sell at reasonable price with parity across the board piracy wouldn't be so big a problem.

I do confess that I have downloaded things I shouldn't have (piracy) but when I see blatant rip-off with pricing parity (especially with digital distribution) it's easy to forgive. That said I now don't bother - the vast majority of my needs are sourced from open source/free sites, and you also get the opportunity to offer feedback that does get taken on board.

If you do use free software and find it useful don't forget to donate a few ££'s to the developers though - they do deserve to be paid for their time.

Side note: to get around the location blocks; these are based solely on IP location - so just use a proxy server located in the region you're purchasing from (using HTTPS). Not 100% secure but not easy to decrypt the information being passed. Use a credit card rather than debit for any purchases though just in case.