I believe we’re approaching the final 3-5 years of prevalent piracy for several reasons:
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Software: The difficulty of cracking and modifying software has significantly increased.
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Movies and TV Shows: Numerous streaming sites have been shut down or faced legal penalties.
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Adult Content: New releases are often removed within 1-5 weeks, and many older titles are no longer available on piracy platforms.
Given these trends, what might a post-piracy world entail?
Open source software offers significant benefits, but there are still many positions that remain unfilled. Specifically, it falls short in areas such as professional software (like AutoCAD) and business management software (such as QuickBooks Desktop and ERP systems).
There’s a difference here that I describe as “pro” meaning specialized, complex software targeted at big businesses vs individual tools of the trade: Vectorworks is gonna get paid for happily by companies needing support and relying on it for critical output, while your next door young architect will run an outdated, cracked version of AutoCAD because it’s just too expensive - that kid could (and should) run Qcad.
Where I see pirated software surviving is also as a form of legacy support: if you run old hardware (i.e. 32bits), that’s where “pro” software is gonna suck & leave you dry, while torrents are still out there.
In gaming or media, cracking looks like a sport, I feel people just want to have fun blowing restrictions to pieces. It’s heartwarming!
Back to the 'tools of the trade" category, I am happy to pay a moderate price to support a talented dev (Isadora, D::Light) but get understandably annoyed at huge businesses practicing insufferable licensing schemes. I wish people start looking, and using then supporting more alternatives out there - but isn’t photoshop still crack-able because it helps it dominate the market where The Gimp would do if it was the standard?