The Pirates of the Softabbean

My hero is a pirate, but not of the “Caribbean” kind. Another kind altogether;  not the sort you’d find swashbuckling or walking planks or cutlassing his foes, or  even drinking rum with his parrot. No, this one prefers binary code and keyboards  to eye patches and skull n bones. Yes, it’s The Pirates of the Soft-abbean, The  software pirates. Those brave misfits who plunder the plentiful coffers of giant  software companies to provide the poor and needy with sustenance and Microsoft  office.

Yes, I’m not ashamed to admit it, Pirates these days are like miniature nerdy  Robin Hoods. Forever selflessly stealing from the rich software lords, and giving  to the poor PC user. Although where maid Marian fits in I haven’t yet  figured out.

Pirates these days have many distinguishing features. Mainly the following:

1- Must be total and complete nerds
2- Must come from Russia, Malaysia or China, although some pirate sightings have been reported in Europe and North America
3- All work for free, they don’t make any profits from piracy.
4- When a pirate is busted, he either immediately  goes to work for a big software  company which pays him handsomely for his counter-piracy services, a privateer if  you like, or he must pay a “bounty” and not use a computer for several years.
5- All pirates must be one step ahead and outsmart the idiotic copyright protection  measures put in place by the major corporations. This is actually easier than it  sounds because copyright measures are like child locks to those “in the know”
6- All Pirates achieve infamy through their pseudonyms, never their real names for  fear of being busted. Just like Blackbeard, Long John Silver and Johnny Depp, Pirates these days have names like Razor 1911, Deviant and Johhny Depp!

So as you can clearly see, Pirates have clearly distinguishing features, namely  anonymity, non-profiteering, silly names and nerdiness.

Having said all that, I’ll explain to you now why Pirates are such heroes to so many.  While big software companies pile on the billions, citizens of the 3rd world are  expected to purchase their over priced products (anywhere between $80 to several  thousand) on an average monthly wage of between 50 to 100 dollars. Neat eh?  Previously, software had to be overpriced in order to pay “western” computer  programmers who everyone knows can not work properly without at least a Porsche 911 Turbo. I remember as a kid reading an article in a  Sinclair magazine which had a photo of one of the two programming brothers at Codemasters standing next to his brand new Ferrari! I was really pi***d off to say the least, it took me a month to save up my pocket money to buy a crappy computer game, and those Ba*****s took my money and bought themselves a Ferrari.

However, recent trends have seen all major software companies like Microsoft,  Adobe, Sun, EA etc outsource software development to 3rd world countries like  India, where you can find very competent software programmers who only need Ford escorts to function properly. Of course, the price of software hasn’t decreased,  which leads us to the conclusion that:
a- All the money is going to the coffers of the already super rich company execs and fat cat investors
b- Software companies are using underpaid 3rd world software developers to make  expensive software to sell back to 3rd world countries.

And that’s when our mighty Pirate hero swings into action. By breaking the  copyright protection on software titles and making cracks hacks and keygens aplenty for almost all conceivable software titles, as well as distributing these riches  throughout the internet on various warez sites or newsgroups, the pirate insures  that even poor people can benefit from technology.

But wait a minutes, software companies take into consideration the lower living  standard when selling software in poor countries, and most brand name computer  manufacturers distribute operating systems with their PCs’, so how can you  condone piracy?
well, number one, even if they sell their software at a discount price, a person on 50$ a month cant afford to pay 50$ for an operating system and a further 200$ for  essential software like Ms Office,  antivirus etc. Oh and people in poor countries can’t  afford to buy Brand names or have you forgotten? You don’t find many people there walking around in a 5000$ Versace suit, so how can you expect them to walk around with a 1500$ laptop? I own a computer store and most people here can barley scrape together the 400$ dollars needed to put together a low end PC made from various assembled “acme” parts.
Number two, most software companies don’t have vendors or distributors for 3rd  world countries, in fact in a lot of 3rd world countries you can’t even find  licensed software, cut priced or otherwise.

All in all, long live the pirates, champions of the poor and down-trodden, may  their cyber-lives be long and fruitful, and their identities remain concealed  and hidden.
Otherwise the poor huddled masses of the world will never know the joys of  word processing, or surfing the net or shooting up aliens. Oh, and college students  in poor countries will never be able to learn any CAD or 3D Max or Macromedia or  Adobe…in fact they would never be able to get an education at all, and thus the divide between the haves and have-nots will get even bigger.

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