Yep, as a teen there's no way my parents would buy me apps and there were no work options without owning a car or licence (which my parents also wouldn't pay for). So I pirated my multimedia tools to launch my career. Now I pay for thousands of dollars a year of legit software out of my own pocket.

These days I think it's changed somewhat with advent of better quality open-source tools that will run on lower-spec systems.

I wonder if it would be a good idea for companies to offer free legit copies of their software to kids, if most of their profit is B2B anyways.

Huh? If an app depended on remote authorization, why wouldn't it simply disable itself after a grace period?

Also, piracy of proprietary software hurts free software, which is means it is worse existential harm to computing than not having access to Photoshop.

> If an app depended on remote authorization, why wouldn't it simply disable itself after a grace period?

Because some people still use computers without internet connections – especially users of “pro” applications (widely defined, e.g. anything made by Adobe), which are some of the most commonly pirated applications. I can confirm from experience that cracks telling you to prevent the program from connecting to the Internet are a thing.

My first thought was that that flow could have the potential to produce false positives, such as from spotty internet connections. This might lead to a poorer user experience, similar to how some legitimate purchasers have had with certain DRM laden games.