aaron wrote:if you're that concerned about whether or not something is legal, you should probably just buy the software. i personally would sell the fuck out of anything i created on licensed or pirated software and not really worry too much about it.
...thus increasing the already inflated prices of these multimedia studios.
it's not the difference between illegal free and paying the 700 to 1500 dollars for the software (or in the case of some software we have that costs upwards to 9 grand for professional licenses).
The issue is going from the VERY affordable student copy up to the professional isn't worth it for someone who might happen to sell off something he created every once in a while like most art students try to do.
for instance...
3Ds Max educational license for 1 year costs 200 dollars. A professional license cost 3,600 dollars. If some small company out there was making a game, came by and saw the work we had sitting around and was like "hey, I'll pay your for some of those models to use in my indie game! How about 500 bucks for the collection of 50 models!"
500 bucks isn't worth going out and getting a 3600 dollar license to keep it "legite" like some indie developers might want to do as they are a small company trying to get off the ground.
Now I know, I SHOULD just go and say, yeah... cool... 500 bucks. Like they are gonna find out about this one small transaction or anything. But this isn't about the money, or any ACTUAL transactional plans that may occur. It's about the life of a educational license. It isn't worth it...
In the respect of say 3Ds Max it is due to the large difference in price. Students get a break and they most likely will get a job after school from a company who supplies the product to them, but what about Adobe Flash CS3.
That's 200 dollars for educational, but 600 for professional. Say the same artist goes and makes something with his student copy of Flash, some website out there says they love it and want to publish it on their website and give you some cash for it, but they require a legite license. The profit off of selling this one little thing to that one little website will not out way the 600 dollars you'd have to shell out on top of already spending 200 dollars... you've just spent 33% more then the average guy for you Flash CS3. Where's the point in the license then?
this question is ignoring pirated copies for the mere fact that it's speculation of choice in staying legel... if the assumed artist (i.e. me as this thread kinda says) wanted to go pirated, I don't think the artist would give two shits about the litigation on what Adobe or Autodesk consider commercial.
