I've been doing it all my life. I've literally never paid for a software license, I don't know any better. In general, I usually download from reputable sources. Haven't had any problems so far.

> Haven't had any problems so far.

That you know of. For all you know you could be infected and part of a botnet. Viruses don't open a big popup saying "haha you've been hacked!".

This line of thinking is extremely common and absolutely nonsensical. The point of a virus is to remain undetected.

> undetected

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a tree falls in the forest and kills someone but no one around to be sad, did they really die?

U=U :)

He’s a Russian. It’s deep in their culture to steal, do not respect others and their work. And brag about it, too.

Russians have huge web portals with all things stolen, and since Russians easily trust Russians in general (especially online), they feel it’s safe to run the modified software on their systems. What are they to lose, really?

Most of them (I talk of general audience, not some developer here on HN) don’t understand the concept of buying software. They don’t understand the concept of copyrights. As much as they don’t understand the concepts of democracy and human rights.

The worst thing about them is that it’s their biggest export.

Oh piss off with your ignorant generalizations. Because Russia is country non grata now it's okay to be as racist as you please to Russians as a people? Grotesque, just as moronic as it has been in all decades past when some idiotic war fever had whole cultures branded as evil or criminal or morally degenerate by idiots of many stripes. Would you apply that same broad strokes standard of stupidly simple thinking to say, black people, or jews?

Also worth noting, piracy is indeed okay when the companies whose software is being pirated behave in blatantly parasitic, extortionate ways that go beyond the scope of what's remotely reasonable for selling you a service.

Ignorant generalisations? I talk about their culture!

I lived in Russia when I was a kid, and I do know what Russia is. Have you? Do you speak Russian, to start with? Do you understand their culture? Or are you just arguing for the sake of it, arguing?

Have you even read my message? A racist? Do you even know what a race is? Is Russian a race now, huh?

Yeah, worth noting, it's okay to steal when you feel like it and justified it for yourself. Go ahead.

> A racist? Do you even know what a race is? Is Russian a race now, huh?

In other words: "I'm not racist, I don't categorize by race. Do you even know what a race is? You have categorized Russians wrongly. It is part of a race, not it's own one..."

> It’s deep in their culture to steal, do not respect others and their work

Piracy != stealing. I'd never steal anything irl because (surprise!) I do respect others and their work. Piracy, however, doesn't deprive the owner of anything, it just creates a copy. From the point of view of the developer, it's not any different from me not existing.

> Most of them (I talk of general audience, not some developer here on HN) don’t understand the concept of buying software

I do understand the concept and I do know people who buy software for personal use. To each their own.

> They don’t understand the concept of copyrights

I personally do understand the concept of copyright. However, I deliberately ignore copyright most of the time because this system is ridiculously biased towards allowing people and companies to hoard intellectual property. It's very good for rent-seeking.

The initial idea behind copyright was sensible. Our current implementation is anything but.

> As much as they don’t understand the concepts of democracy and human rights

Please don't lump the people and the government together. I see people make this mistake way too often. Yours, a disgruntled Russian who wants democracy and human rights yet is powerless to do shit about it. (I do keep voting against Putin though.)

> You understand the copyright, but you don’t respect it. That’s the idea.

I understand stupid ideas, but I'm not required to respect them. Make the copyright last 3 years instead of an eternity, or make copyright holders pay an exponentially increasing tax, per copyrighted work, to extend it every year, then I'll reconsider.

> You’re okay with having your Photoshop, but for free.

Yes I am. Proudly. Why should I care? Adobe won't sell me a subscription even if I wanted one, btw. Because I'm Russian.

If I were into making compromises to prove things, I'd be using desktop Linux.

And Adobe isn't a small startup struggling to make ends meet. They would've still been profitable even if no one paid for their products for personal use and their only paying customers were businesses.

> As Russia is a democratic country indeed. And that is the way of overthrowing a dictator, voting against him on the next ballot. Doing anything else is futile, obviously.

I'm open to suggestions. You can also come here and try to overthrow him yourself if you think we're doing such a poor job of it. I'll be sure to take a picture of you getting arrested.

Thanks for gracefully demonstrating exactly what I meant. To Russians,

- laws are some stupid ideas you aren’t required to respect. Nothing is perfect, and when you don’t like something, you act accordingly to improve things. Not waiting for someone else to make the world perfect for your liking, and then and only then you’ll follow the rules. Yeah, only the rules you like.

- nothing is wrong with software piracy. Yeah, totally makes sense to brag about you being a proud pirate on a forum where most of the folks are software developers. That’s precisely what I told earlier about you disrespecting the work of others by not paying for it. Yet, feeling entitled to use their work up to your liking. And of course, you’re proud of it! You’re a Russian, after all. As I said, they do brag about the things others ashamed of.

- coming to other sovereign state and overthrow their government is okay. In a civilised world, we just don’t do that.

What a blessed infantilism. A mysterious Russian soul indeed.

The fact that something is a law doesn't automatically make it good and worthy of respect. And, after all, is it even a proper law if it's hardly ever enforced, and if so many people are not on board with it? Or would you call the police if you found out your neighbor is pirating software?

I'm a software developer myself, by the way. And because of how much I despise the current idea of copyright, I release all my projects under The Unlicense, and since 2016, I no longer work on anything proprietary and/or requiring an NDA.

Wtf? Obviously you can't post slurs like this to HN, regardless of which population you're slurring. Since we've asked you before not to do this and you've continued to do it, I've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

What you posted was obviously a slur—this was not a borderline call. You can't make pejorative generalizations about entire populations like that on HN, no matter which population, nor how you feel about them. I'm surprised to have to spell this out.

HN's rules don't change during a conflict. On the contrary, they become even more applicable: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> So my assumption is that you just chose your side already

People frequently assume that they got banned because the moderator just disagrees with them, rather than because they broke the rules. We hear this from every side of every argument. All I can tell you is that what you posted would be just as unacceptable if it were about any other nationality. Like I said, this is not a borderline call.

Banned accounts are allowed to comment on HN, but their posts are killed by default. Users can vouch for the good comments posted by banned accounts, so the posts don't necessarily stay [dead].

A botnet that shows no evidence of saturating my CPU, RAM, disk, network? OK fine then.

Most malware these days does things like demand bitcoin, popup ads, or upload your files to the cloud without your consent.

If I've actually unknowingly downloaded a virus, it's honestly less malevolent than the paid version.

> If I've actually unknowingly downloaded a virus, it's honestly less malevolent than the paid version.

This is a remarkable observation on the sad state of paid software. It's so sad because it's so true.

I don't mind buying software, but I do mind pretty much all DRM implementations. Even simple license checks have bitten me in the past when I had no internet access and the software just decided that time was up and it needed to verify me. Nothing fills me with rage more than software that I paid for refusing to run while I'm camping or on a plane or somewhere else without internet, for software that doesn't need any networt functionality whatsoever to operate.

:) reputable torrent sources usually have a comment section and viruses are found and the torrent nuked faster than you get around to downloading the stuff...

I'll take my chances. Adobe have proven they want to spy on me 100% of the time and shake me down for as much cash as possible. Pirates ostensibly have to compete on the quality of the product they offer.

We're in a world where the legal solution isn't exactly safe, secure nor convenient either

I agree with you, but on a practical level, private trackers are moderated, and so, reasonably safe and secure. Convenience is case by case. Often, the official stuff puts up such a fuss that the pirated copy is more convenient to use.

No, from known sources.

>be me

>"Google wants to know your location"

>fuck off you already know it anyway

>"Do you want to allow this app from an unknown publisher to make changes to your device? PiratedGameFromRussianTorrents.exe"

>ok

The biggest problem with piracy is the entry barrier. You need to know what sites are safe, what aren't. Also, Google hides results from torrent sites, so yeah, it's kind of an underground club. If you're a newbie you're going to get ransomware, if you know the basics it's trivial. Piracy isn't as popular as 10 years ago, but it's still there, mostly powered by poor countries.

> or even convenient

Back before Steam, when I bought a game on disc I downloaded the no-cd crack before opening the box to install it...