Buying and using Pirated Products is Not only Illegal but Stupid

Buying and using Pirated Software is Not only Illegal but Stupid. Unless you have been living in some remote island as a hermit and completely removed from the modern world, most of my readers know that using pirated software or buying pirated video or pirated music is illegal. So, I won’t go into the legal technicalities of the subject. What I want to focus on is the inherent stupidity of sustaining this practice.

We all know the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Simply put, ignorance can be cured by knowledge; stupidity on the other hand cannot. Why is using pirated anything stupid? Let me enumerate the reasons and elaborate on the damning consequences that result from this stupidity.

First, let’s define what piracy is. Piracy is theft plain and simple. It is stealing something that belongs to another and profiting or benefiting from stolen goods through trade and personal consumption. It is getting something for nothing. We must realize that the freedom to use a proprietary product does not mean “free lunch” or “free to profit”. Music companies, for example provides consumers the freedom to enjoy their products, but not the freedom to resell those products or freedom to illegally distribute those products.

It is easy for us to get all roused whenever we hear of thieves breaking in and stealing from a local business institution, or about sea pirates who steal cargo and fuel from oceanic liners and transport vessels. We attack these perpetrators with such indignation. This, unfortunately, is not the case when it comes to the subject of pursuing software and video pirates. Because of its distributed form, consumers do not feel that they are stealing simply because they have purchased pirated software. In most cases, consumers actively search out kiosks that sell pirated items believing that they are getting more for less. Just imagine being able to purchase a software product that is legitimately sold in the market for hundreds of thousands of pesos for only a couple of hundred pesos? For consumers this is a no-brainer. The fact that they could purchase a software product for less than one percent of its present market value outweighs much of the ethical value that would otherwise discourage a person from engaging in such a transaction.

Unscrupulous entrepreneurs continue to profit because they know that there will always be consumers and fellow thieves who will patronize their products and services—consumers who will always want something for nothing who even serve as powerful marketing tool for this cartel of thieves. These cartels are driven by the could and ignore the ethical boundaries of the should. This transaction of stupidity allows both retailer and consumer to benefit and profit at the expense of another.

Why is software piracy stupid?

First, it plainly creates and sustains a culture of theft. Thieves think only of themselves, what they can profit from without regard to another’s welfare. Those that buy from thieves, even if they argue on the basis of lower costs, are themselves no better than the thieves that stole the product. Thieves benefit from something they did not work to develop or produce, they simply take advantage of another’s work, they fish from another’s bucket of fish.

Second, it kills the industry by competitive disadvantage. People that use pirated software, for example, can easily drop prices for the goods and services simply because it did not cost them as much to gain the added capability. Multimedia development, for example, requires the purchase of high-end software products in order to produce an output that is at par with market standards and quality expectations. These software products serve as an effective barrier to entry which protects an industry. Because of software piracy, this profession is virtually a dead-end in the Philippines only because pirated development software is available allowing those who use such products to drop their prices (which they could not do if they had to make a substantial entry investment in the software and training) offered to the market. Those who legitimately acquired their capabilities now stands at a disadvantage since the market will now opt for a competitor with a lower price offering for similar products and services. An industry that would have offered great opportunity is now destroyed because someone decided to sell and buy a pirated copy of a high value software product. Because of the availability of pirated software, everyone can afford to compete in the same space. It cannot be said that talent will differentiate one from the other since talent can only go so far especially when the expected deliverable is electronic in nature.

Third, because of competitive disadvantage, it polarizes the investment atmosphere of the country. Since everything could literally be bought for a dollar and with the consumer market losing its concept of value, potential investors of high value products and services will continue to distance itself from the country where the promise of sustainability, much less that of return on investment, will be difficult to achieve.

Fourth, in a lopsided competitive environment, small enterprises will suffer as local big business will certainly opt for the lowest prices possible. Since lowest price is a relative function, and not one based on fiduciary limits, competent and capable resources that comprise small enterprises will continue its exodus out of the country as their businesses and employers are forced to shut down from suffering the ill effects of unfair business practices. Here we will find high integrity businesses, whose owners invested everything to make their enterprises succeed, fall prey to unfair competition, driving them from the middle-class to impoverished overnight.
Fifth, as a result of this exodus of capable professionals, market confidence for local small businesses will continue to fall through and the economy will entirely lose its capability to innovate as it continues to metastasize into a purely consuming (and not producing) economy; and with the absence of thriving small enterprises, the rate of people living under the poverty line will increase and the gap between rich and poor will exponentially widen within a short period of time.

While this sounds like over amplification, it isn’t. This stupidity has created larger systemic social and economic problems that becomes difficult to undo. This stupidity, all for the sake of buying items at the lowest possible cost and at all costs, if not arrested quickly will serve as the lynchpin that triggers economic implosion.

So, the next time you are tempted to purchase pirated products, be it software or video products think about what this “savings” will mean for our country’s long terms survival. The next time a vendor offers services at a price point that is low, you need to ask how they can afford to do so. The next time you try to become “financially responsible” by getting the lowest price, think again…this transaction may be the final nail that seals our coffins for good.

The best at the lowest possible price is not an economically sustainable mindset. We must rather choose the best value at market prices. It may seem expensive, but when viewed as a system, it will more likely put more money in the pocket you drew the money from to buy a value-product at market prices.

Then again, if you would rather buy stolen goods and have no qualms about doing so, or even pride yourself about your ability to do so, then you are nothing more than a thief who gets what he or she wants through fellow thieves. Knowledge cannot help you only because your problem is a character flaw (you are a thief); and where knowledge cannot do anything to change the way you think and behave, you are what I call a stupid individual.

We reap what we sow. If we want to see our country economically progress, then we need to attack those who sell pirated software and video, or anything pirated with as much indignation as what we have against thieves who break-in and steal from stores and banks and against carjackers, and snatchers. Remember the low cost to you means economic disaster for everyone else.

Don’t be stupid and think. Don’t buy pirated products and don’t patronize companies that use pirated software products. If they could afford to steal at this level, they won’t think twice about stealing from you.