Macromedia up in arms against piracy

“I was wondering if you can throw any light on Macromedia’s anti-piracy initiative in India. I believe some users (in Mumbai atleast) have received letters from Macromedia urging them to purchase licences.” This was an e-mail I received from a person few days back. And early today morning one of my friend called me up saying he just got a Notification letter from Macromedia, India to start buying licences of Macromedia Softwares if they haven’t already. About a year ago or so, I was called up by some representative of Macromedia, India and told me I am using pirated copies because my name was not listed in their book where they keep records of persons/companies who bought softwares from them. Well, I told them nicely that I got my copies from Macromedia HQ itself and what I used are all legal ones. And all software bought by me so far are all online and I have never bought anything from India itself.

The developers and designers alike here, are also to be believed when they claim that “here in India, the developers and designers alike are way poorer than their counterparts in the countries like the US, UK and have to really think before buying legal copies of the same.” Another true part is that many ended up using cracked versions of the softwares (don’t ask me much because I don’t have the statistics myself). Many have happily claimed to have in possession of “cracked” versions and few have even laughed at me for advocating on the usage of legal copies of softwares.

Unlike Book Publications, softwares cannot have a low-priced Indian Edition, so I am not sure how things can change, if it had to, about that “poorer” excuse(reason) put up by the software users here. The topic piracy is something that will go on and on through the world and not just here in India, will keep popping up again and again and will never end.