by J. Young

Created on: August 20, 2008   Last Updated: October 24, 2008

A brief atonement

I have been stealing software for years. There, I said it. I know, I know, it's illegal. In fact it's morally bankrupt. How would I feel if someone stole my hard work? Robbed me of my ability to provide sustenance to my family? How would I feel about having to work at Wal-Mart because everybody decides to steal my software instead of paying for it?

I agree. When I'm working hard at Burger King, and I spend a little extra time cleaning behind the deep-fryers, and that brown-noser Christina tells my boss, Tim, that she was the one who did it: I get very angry.

But, in my defense, when was the last time you heard somebody say: "Ohh, that poor Bills Gates. He worked so hard, but the pirates stole the shirt right-off his back."? And when was the last time you saw Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe Sytems (you know, that little company that owns the rights to: Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, Acrobat, etcetera), standing in line at the welfare office?

While bankrupting a Corporation is clearly different than simply causing a loss of profit; I think the argument could be made that the losses that are actually sustained by these companies are much less significant than they publicize.

I, however, am a clear example that piracy is real. I don't want to toot my own horn, but over the past 10 years or so, I have stolen literally tens-of-thousands-of-dollars worth of software. I have in my possession everything from Windows '95 to Vista; all of Adobe's software since they were competing with Jasc (and all of Jasc's software too); all of Macromedia's software before they were bought out by Adobe; and, every Microsoft application ever made-among other things. I have software for software that is needed to run other software within that software. I have Terabytes worth of software.

Making matters worse; I share software. I am part of dozens of different online communities that are composed of millions of people around the world who all share software. I belong to networks of people that reverse-engineering software. People who re-engineer pieces of engineered software that were reverse-engineered long ago.

This all sounds horrible, I know. But here's the kicker. I have never made a single penny from any of this software. Ever.

So, why, one might ask, would you waste so much time, energy and money to procure things that you cannot profit from? It's simple. I quit my job at Burger King over 10 years ago because, upon learning how to use all of this software,

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