Piracy and Digital content ‍☠️

This information can be used for publishers as well as for pirates.

I WAS COMPLETELY WRONG

... or a story about Piracy ‍☠️ ☠️ in my childhood of the 90's and '00s

Everybody used pirate games, movies, music - without paying to copyright holder.

There were 2 reasons for this:

1. Misery
   Post USSR countries were poor: no money for everyday things.
2. Culture
   No culture about buying software and any digital content.

In the 2000s, people began to have money, but no one canceled on saving. There was a principle: "didn't steal - saved."

This was not regarded as a crime yet: neither from the point of view of people, nor from the point of view of the law.

Pirated CDs were sold on almost every street: indoor and outdoor - winter and summer.

Being a child once I scolded my parent that he bought a licensed DVD-movie in the official store, and did not download it on a torrent-tracker for free.

After all, why pay for human labor?

I WAS COMPLETELY WRONG.

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Today I buy everything: music, movies, software, icons, games, unity assets. When I don't have enough money, I don't buy until I earn.

In the previous post, I bought a new version of Affinity Photo editor, because I love it and use everyday in my work.

Periodically, I buy Unity Assets for Editor to improve my workflow of producing my own Unity Assets (not for Editor): e.g., Maintainer - garbage & issue collector for your Unity Project.

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I believe that pirate stuff is the worst thing for modern digital economy. But I can't judge the people involved into this in the past.

The Better Time to stop consuming pirate content is Today.
Today, people have more opportunities for studying and earning, so you don't need to be a pirate.

Any part of your life, work, and business, related to piracy, makes you vulnerable:

• for competing in the international space,
• for viruses,
• for police,
• for conscience.

When you start producing the digital content, you can see how the piracy break the economy.

When you buy the pirate content, you're hurting yourself. It looks like a chain reaction: services and goods are becoming more expensive, people lose their jobs, the crime rate is increasing.

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✅ The only effective way to hit the piracy from the Publisher's side - invest in your knowledge and release new updates with paid upgrades.

So paid upgrades - another consequence of piracy, unfortunately.

In 2018, I released my book about Asset Publishing on the Unity Asset Store.

Some Part of this book you can read For FREE on my website.

I can regard this as a small contribution to the fight against piracy - by providing free knowledge based on my experience.