Subscription Software is Abandonware
"Here is a book. You can read it for a month and then a hidden fuse inside will cause it to dissolve. You are forbidden from finding and disabling that fuse in order to keep reading the book longer. It would be both illegal and immoral for you to do so. Also, you can't buy a copy without a fuse."
Decades ago I convinced myself that it is morally and ethically permissible to copy or download media (software, songs, movies) that are not available for sale anywhere / any more. In the software world this is known as "abandonware"; I don't know a more specific term for movies or music or other media. In the time since then more and more software has been abandoned, including whole previously-market-majority operating systems and productivity applications, and I have only grown more certain of my previous conclusion. The legality of the situation has rarely been relevant.
At some point I also stopped downloading software illegally that didn't meet the above criteria. I have not pirated a currently-available-to-buy piece of software in the last 15 years, and I knew that I was behaving immorally when I was still doing so. I illegally downloaded some movies more recently than that, but haven't done that in quite a while either. Music was never a major part of my life, so I have incidentally avoided downloading music without permission, but I suspect it would have followed a similar trend to movies otherwise.
In the past 5-10 years, things have gotten more complicated. Many newer pieces of software are only available to rent ("subscribe"). Many of them receive relatively incremental updates every year, or even more often, instead of the groundbreaking next versions we had to wait years for in the past. Backwards compatibility and maintaining historic functionality is less frequently a design goal, leading to features effectively disappearing.
That brings us to the present. I am currently evaluating my thoughts and feelings on the subject of "software piracy" in the context of modern subscription software. Most of this software will never be available for sale, and some that was became unavailable far sooner than would have seemed appropriate historically. As of a few years ago, Adobe refuses to sell copies of Photoshop or the rest of their "Creative Suite", only offering a subscription to their "Creative Cloud". Not only will they not sell the latest version, they also won't sell the last non-subscription version, which was only available for sale for a few years. There are dozens of other pieces of software in a similar situation, but I won't bore you with a list of them here.
Rewinding the clock a decade or two... I am imagining a situation where a movie is available on VHS or DVD for rental, but not available for sale. In that situation, would I have qualms about making a copy for my own personal use while renting the movie? I am pretty sure that I would not. Coming back to the present, I would apply the same consideration to an internet movie rental service like Amazon Prime, although I am not aware of any such services renting movies that are not otherwise available for sale. Someone should remind me if Disney ever splits their "vault" strategy into out-of-sync sales and rental categories.
The right to control how long and in what ways someone can use a creative work (movie, book, song, game, app) that they possess a copy of was never the intention of the original authors of our copyright laws. The Overton window has shifted in the last few decades; 50-200 years ago you would have been laughed at for suggesting that the publisher of a book might be allowed to destroy copies in the wild or that the creator of a song might be allowed to tell people that they can only listen to recordings once per day. Today, those are "rights" that platforms like Amazon and Spotify reserve, and most people barely blink when confronted about this state of affairs.
At the top of this post I offered a hypothetical quote that is effectively equivalent to what Adobe and other software subscription services are doing. I hope that at least some people reading this will recognize how ridiculous it sounds. I think this decision is long overdue: I will no longer shy away from pirating or cracking modern software that is not available for sale, particularly including software that has only ever been available as a subscription.
Decades ago I convinced myself that it is morally and ethically permissible to copy or download media (software, songs, movies) that are not available for sale anywhere / any more. In the software world this is known as "abandonware"; I don't know a more specific term for movies or music or other media. In the time since then more and more software has been abandoned, including whole previously-market-majority operating systems and productivity applications, and I have only grown more certain of my previous conclusion. The legality of the situation has rarely been relevant.
At some point I also stopped downloading software illegally that didn't meet the above criteria. I have not pirated a currently-available-to-buy piece of software in the last 15 years, and I knew that I was behaving immorally when I was still doing so. I illegally downloaded some movies more recently than that, but haven't done that in quite a while either. Music was never a major part of my life, so I have incidentally avoided downloading music without permission, but I suspect it would have followed a similar trend to movies otherwise.
In the past 5-10 years, things have gotten more complicated. Many newer pieces of software are only available to rent ("subscribe"). Many of them receive relatively incremental updates every year, or even more often, instead of the groundbreaking next versions we had to wait years for in the past. Backwards compatibility and maintaining historic functionality is less frequently a design goal, leading to features effectively disappearing.
That brings us to the present. I am currently evaluating my thoughts and feelings on the subject of "software piracy" in the context of modern subscription software. Most of this software will never be available for sale, and some that was became unavailable far sooner than would have seemed appropriate historically. As of a few years ago, Adobe refuses to sell copies of Photoshop or the rest of their "Creative Suite", only offering a subscription to their "Creative Cloud". Not only will they not sell the latest version, they also won't sell the last non-subscription version, which was only available for sale for a few years. There are dozens of other pieces of software in a similar situation, but I won't bore you with a list of them here.
Rewinding the clock a decade or two... I am imagining a situation where a movie is available on VHS or DVD for rental, but not available for sale. In that situation, would I have qualms about making a copy for my own personal use while renting the movie? I am pretty sure that I would not. Coming back to the present, I would apply the same consideration to an internet movie rental service like Amazon Prime, although I am not aware of any such services renting movies that are not otherwise available for sale. Someone should remind me if Disney ever splits their "vault" strategy into out-of-sync sales and rental categories.
The right to control how long and in what ways someone can use a creative work (movie, book, song, game, app) that they possess a copy of was never the intention of the original authors of our copyright laws. The Overton window has shifted in the last few decades; 50-200 years ago you would have been laughed at for suggesting that the publisher of a book might be allowed to destroy copies in the wild or that the creator of a song might be allowed to tell people that they can only listen to recordings once per day. Today, those are "rights" that platforms like Amazon and Spotify reserve, and most people barely blink when confronted about this state of affairs.
At the top of this post I offered a hypothetical quote that is effectively equivalent to what Adobe and other software subscription services are doing. I hope that at least some people reading this will recognize how ridiculous it sounds. I think this decision is long overdue: I will no longer shy away from pirating or cracking modern software that is not available for sale, particularly including software that has only ever been available as a subscription.