Ethics of using older software that may be pirated

[kmaaj]

Here’s the premise:

I’m a musician.

@10 years ago, a buddy gave me a copy of CoolEdit Pro that he legitimately owned. He told me that since we worked together (I have done some contract work for him), my usage of it falls under “fair use”.

We have not worked together for a few years now. I still have a working copy of CoolEdit Pro on my PC. People at a musician’s forum have informed me that my copy never was and never will be “legit”, it was always pirated on my part. CoolEdit was bought out buy Adobe and is now called Audition. The current version is way too bloated and expensive for my use. I prefer the old version of CoolEdit Pro as it sits on my PC. I also prefer it to the many freewares and demos of other similar softwares. I am willing to buy a copy, and I am on the watch for an older legit version on the 'bay.

As a Catholic, should I remove this version that is now on my PC until I get my own version?

 

[1ke]

@10 years ago, a buddy gave me a copy of CoolEdit Pro that he legitimately owned. He told me that since we worked together (I have done some contract work for him), my usage of it falls under “fair use”.

This was completely untrue. It was never legitimate for him to give you a pirated copy. It certainly does NOT fall under fair use.

We have not worked together for a few years now. I still have a working copy of CoolEdit Pro on my PC. People at a musician’s forum have informed me that my copy never was and never will be “legit”, it was always pirated on my part.

They are correct. Moreover, even if you were operating under the belief that it was OK since you were contracting for him, you clearly know that it is not OK to keep it now that you are no longer doing so and haven’t done so in years.

So, basically you already know that keeping it on your computer is wrong, even if you started out believing his bogus story about “fair use”.

CoolEdit was bought out buy Adobe and is now called Audition. The current version is way too bloated and expensive for my use. I prefer the old version of CoolEdit Pro as it sits on my PC.

Which is completely irrelevant because you do not legally own Cool Edit and cannot buy it. So, you need to remove it from your PC.

If you need editing software, buy a legitimate copy of Audition.

I also prefer it to the many freewares and demos of other similar softwares. I am willing to buy a copy, and I am on the watch for an older legit version on the 'bay.

Again, not relevant. The choices as I see it are to download Audacity-- which is free-- or purchase Audition or another product. Using the pirated software is wrong.

As a Catholic, should I remove this version that is now on my PC until I get my own version?

Yes.

 

[kmaaj]

Which is completely irrelevant because you do not legally own Cool Edit and cannot buy it. So, you need to remove it from your PC.

So, if I find an original copy on eBay, from someone who is no longer using it, it’s still not legit?

To put it another way, is the only way that I can legitimately use an older version of CoolEdit Pro is to find a sealed original that has never been registered?

I have Audacity and am evaluating Reaper, I am leaning towards purchasing Reaper.

 

[exnihilo]

To actually know for sure you’d have to look at the license of the software you are using. There are default rights regarding software, but a license could alter those rights. Of course particular conditions in the license may or may not itself be legal. If the person who gave it to you is no longer using it I would think you should be able to run that software. If that is wrong then it is just as wrong to lend a book to someone else and almost no one thinks that is wrong.

BTW have you ever looked into Audacity? I have no idea what functionality you need but it is a free, open source audio editing program. It works great for my very simple needs.

 

[exnihilo]

So, if I find an original copy on eBay, from someone who is no longer using it, it’s still not legit?

To put it another way, is the only way that I can legitimately use an older version of CoolEdit Pro is to find a sealed original that has never been registered?

You are able to transfer a software license. If someone is selling it on eBay you can buy it and use it. You assume that the person selling it is no longer using the software. You can not know that they intend to still use it and violate a license. If there is any thing unethical there it would be on them and not you.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

So, if I find an original copy on eBay, from someone who is no longer using it, it’s still not legit?

To put it another way, is the only way that I can legitimately use an older version of CoolEdit Pro is to find a sealed original that has never been registered?

No, so long as you purchase it legitimately, whether it be from the company or another person, it’s yours to own.

My personal feeling on the matter is that, if you are incapable of purchasing a product. I mean, completely incapable without extreme and undue hardship (checking e-bay doesn’t count as that ) then it’s ok to download it since there is no longer a legitimate way for you to obtain the software.

 

[kmaaj]

To actually know for sure you’d have to look at the license of the software you are using. There are default rights regarding software, but a license could alter those rights. Of course particular conditions in the license may or may not itself be legal. If the person who gave it to you is no longer using it I would think you should be able to run that software. If that is wrong then it is just as wrong to lend a book to someone else and almost no one thinks that is wrong.

BTW have you ever looked into Audacity? I have no idea what functionality you need but it is a free, open source audio editing program. It works great for my very simple needs.

The functionality that I need is extremely simple, hence Audition being too bloated and expensive. One solo classical guitar into a cardiod and a figure 8 in mid-side configuration.

The thing that interests me about Audacity is that it is quite easy to manually manipulate the stereo image in editing from a mid-side recording. I cannot stand the stock reverbs already loaded into it, but I have not looked into plugins yet.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

No, so long as you purchase it legitimately, whether it be from the company or another person, it’s yours to own.

My personal feeling on the matter is that, if you are incapable of purchasing a product. I mean, completely incapable without extreme and undue hardship (checking e-bay doesn’t count as that ) then it’s ok to download it since there is no longer a legitimate way for you to obtain the software.

So wait, under that would it mean that if you manage to buy a silent movie that came out 80+ years ago and you acquired a VHS copy off eBay for $200 would it be acceptable to share it for educational purposes (would be good for teaching All Quiet On the Western Front) if it appears no one owns the rights to it?

 

[kmaaj]

To actually know for sure you’d have to look at the license of the software you are using.

I just did, and there is a “multi user” clause in the EULA. Whether or not he got the required additional licenses, I do not know.

 

[anruari]

So wait, under that would it mean that if you manage to buy a silent movie that came out 80+ years ago and you acquired a VHS copy off eBay for $200 would it be acceptable to share it for educational purposes (would be good for teaching All Quiet On the Western Front) if it appears no one owns the rights to it?

A movie that came out 80+ years ago would no longer be covered by copyright laws. It is “Public Domain”. You are free to copy and sell the content for any price you can get away with.
The limit on mechanical copyright protection is 50 years.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

A movie that came out 80+ years ago would no longer be covered by copyright laws. It is “Public Domain”. You are free to copy and sell the content for any price you can get away with.
The limit on mechanical copyright protection is 50 years.

A corporation released it on VHS ~35 years ago, the acquisition was of the VHS not reels of film

 

[ChibiViolet]

You’re not committing a mortal sin in any case and you’re not the one who pirated it in the first place so what you’re doing may not even be sinful at all. In other words, I’d say don’t worry about it.

 

[mountee]

kmaaj,
I was interested in the reply you received from 1ke as I think that what I know from my past experience might disagree with part of his response. I was a teacher for many years and many times the software that was used in school could be taken home and installed on our computers because we worked at home and needed to use the same software available that we used at school. So, what you said at first seemed like it was o.k., you worked with someone who had a legitimate program that you needed to use in your work for him also. The place where you may never be certain is how many licenses he had to for the program as sometimes it is only one and so he may have been mistaken when he told you it was o.k. But for now, I would do just what you said you were going to do, attempt to buy the software on-line legitimately. I did that recently with a Microsoft program and it was successfully verified on installation, I presume that means that the person I bought it from no longer had it on their computer or Microsoft would have refused to verify. Anyway, I am not a computer expert but I would not want to 'steal" something either so I hope you get what you need legally. I would not remove it from my computer until I had exhausted my attempt to purchase legally, many times things do not completely delete and if you could make your current copy legit then it would save time and trouble. But, I certainly would not use it any more until then.

 

[SonCatcher]

Here’s the premise:

I’m a musician.

@10 years ago, a buddy gave me a copy of CoolEdit Pro that he legitimately owned. He told me that since we worked together (I have done some contract work for him), my usage of it falls under “fair use”.

We have not worked together for a few years now. I still have a working copy of CoolEdit Pro on my PC. People at a musician’s forum have informed me that my copy never was and never will be “legit”, it was always pirated on my part. CoolEdit was bought out buy Adobe and is now called Audition. The current version is way too bloated and expensive for my use. I prefer the old version of CoolEdit Pro as it sits on my PC. I also prefer it to the many freewares and demos of other similar softwares. I am willing to buy a copy, and I am on the watch for an older legit version on the 'bay.

As a Catholic, should I remove this version that is now on my PC until I get my own version?

If you are still in contact with your buddy, ask whether he discontinued using his license. (If he has purchased upgrade after upgrade to the current version of Audition, he has not discontinued it. If he even once purchased the full version because he didn’t qualify for the upgrade then he has.) It would also be a good idea to determine whether he “loaned” it to anyone else while you’re at it.

If he has discontinued using his license (and you can be sure you would be the only user, you could ask him to transfer it to you. This is fully legal and you would have the legitimate license. If he no longer has the disc, etc, an email exchange might qualify as a record of transfer.

If you cannot obtain the license from your friend or another legitimate source, you will have to discontinue using it. (I’d hesitate on deleting it entirely since a future legitimate copy might come on faulty media).

I remember Cool Edit. As I recall, the “trial” version didn’t expire and let you do anything you want but you could only select one feature each time you loaded it. So you could load it once to normalize your tracks, then close. Load another time to remove noise and close again. It was rather annoying, but if you only need it once in a while it’s not too bad (and fully legal).

 

[SonCatcher]

kmaaj,
I was interested in the reply you received from 1ke as I think that what I know from my past experience might disagree with part of his response. I was a teacher for many years and many times the software that was used in school could be taken home and installed on our computers because we worked at home and needed to use the same software available that we used at school. So, what you said at first seemed like it was o.k., you worked with someone who had a legitimate program that you needed to use in your work for him also. The place where you may never be certain is how many licenses he had to for the program as sometimes it is only one and so he may have been mistaken when he told you it was o.k. But for now, I would do just what you said you were going to do, attempt to buy the software on-line legitimately. I did that recently with a Microsoft program and it was successfully verified on installation, I presume that means that the person I bought it from no longer had it on their computer or Microsoft would have refused to verify. Anyway, I am not a computer expert but I would not want to 'steal" something either so I hope you get what you need legally. I would not remove it from my computer until I had exhausted my attempt to purchase legally, many times things do not completely delete and if you could make your current copy legit then it would save time and trouble. But, I certainly would not use it any more until then.

Nope - it wasn’t an academic license and if a company license was applicable, it would have ended when he stopped working for the company.

 

[Chrish1975]

Here’s the premise:

I’m a musician.

@10 years ago, a buddy gave me a copy of CoolEdit Pro that he legitimately owned. He told me that since we worked together (I have done some contract work for him), my usage of it falls under “fair use”.

We have not worked together for a few years now. I still have a working copy of CoolEdit Pro on my PC. People at a musician’s forum have informed me that my copy never was and never will be “legit”, it was always pirated on my part. CoolEdit was bought out buy Adobe and is now called Audition. The current version is way too bloated and expensive for my use. I prefer the old version of CoolEdit Pro as it sits on my PC. I also prefer it to the many freewares and demos of other similar softwares. I am willing to buy a copy, and I am on the watch for an older legit version on the 'bay.

As a Catholic, should I remove this version that is now on my PC until I get my own version?

Buy a copy of the current edition in CD/DVD form of Audition and just use the old copy of Cooledit Pro. Keep the receipt and the CD/DVD as proof of purchase. When you buy software you are actually buying a license to use the product not the physical product itself.
When you are done using Cooledit pro you can sell the CD/DVD of Audition on the used market on eBay or Amazon.

 

[SonCatcher]

Buy a copy of the current edition in CD/DVD form of Audition and just use the old copy of Cooledit Pro. Keep the receipt and the CD/DVD as proof of purchase. When you buy software you are actually buying a license to use the product not the physical product itself.
When you are done using Cooledit pro you can sell the CD/DVD of Audition on the used market on eBay or Amazon.

It would be a good idea to preview the license. Some licenses allow you to use “any previous version” but they might not all be so lenient.

 

[edwest2]

Here’s the premise:

I’m a musician.

@10 years ago, a buddy gave me a copy of CoolEdit Pro that he legitimately owned. He told me that since we worked together (I have done some contract work for him), my usage of it falls under “fair use”.

We have not worked together for a few years now. I still have a working copy of CoolEdit Pro on my PC. People at a musician’s forum have informed me that my copy never was and never will be “legit”, it was always pirated on my part. CoolEdit was bought out buy Adobe and is now called Audition. The current version is way too bloated and expensive for my use. I prefer the old version of CoolEdit Pro as it sits on my PC. I also prefer it to the many freewares and demos of other similar softwares. I am willing to buy a copy, and I am on the watch for an older legit version on the 'bay.

As a Catholic, should I remove this version that is now on my PC until I get my own version?

From the US Copyright Office:

copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Whenever anyone tells you something about an issue like this, always ask for a credible source.

Peace,
Ed

 

[JacquesMaritain]

Here’s the premise:

I’m a musician.

@10 years ago, a buddy gave me a copy of CoolEdit Pro that he legitimately owned. He told me that since we worked together (I have done some contract work for him), my usage of it falls under “fair use”.

We have not worked together for a few years now. I still have a working copy of CoolEdit Pro on my PC. People at a musician’s forum have informed me that my copy never was and never will be “legit”, it was always pirated on my part. CoolEdit was bought out buy Adobe and is now called Audition. The current version is way too bloated and expensive for my use. I prefer the old version of CoolEdit Pro as it sits on my PC. I also prefer it to the many freewares and demos of other similar softwares. I am willing to buy a copy, and I am on the watch for an older legit version on the 'bay.

As a Catholic, should I remove this version that is now on my PC until I get my own version?

Hi kmaaj:

I think the reason people pirate things like software is because they believe it costs too much. That’s probably what your musician friend was thinking when he “lent” you his copy (or maybe he did have a multi-user license, who really knows?) It looks like the Adobe Audition software costs about 350 bucks or so, and yeah, that’s quite expensive; no wonder people are tempted to cheat.

If corporations priced their software more reasonably, people would not pirate it; it is an absurdity that while hardware for computers gets cheaper and cheaper every year, the software just gets more expensive (Hint to corporations: if the software licenses/fees for the average user cost more than the entire computer, something’s wrong!) I actually wrote some science software in the early days of personal computing (back in the old MS-DOS days, but I gave it away for anyone to use for free…I’m an educator/teacher, I’m not in the business to get rich LOL, and frankly the appreciation of the people who used it (not many, I admit) was all the payment I ever wanted…it’s nice to give something back for a change). Hats off to the Free Software Foundation, the Wayback Archive, the Linux Projects like Ubuntu, openSuse, PuppyLinux, and so many other computing programs that try to help people, especially in developing countries, without asking them to pay up first).

Companies like Microsoft/Apple/Adobe et al, say in their defence that they need to recoup the costs of research and development, but when you see them posting enormous profits (5 billion in the last quarter alone!) you can see why people get cynical about their cries of “poverty” and “theft”:

reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-microsoft-idUSBRE83I1DO20120419
techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/adobe-q1-earnings/

Anyway, to your question. Is CoolEdit Pro possibly abandonware? (that’s when a company either goes belly-up/bankrupt, or someone acquires the rights to a company’s software, but just doesn’t care to keep it going, effectively “abandoning” it like so much digital trash). Those of us who own older computers often find this frustrating, as you can’t buy legal versions of a lot of these old programs, even if you wanted to. It is also annoying for digital archivists, who are trying valiantly to preserve the early history of computing, but are finding it difficult because of misguided efforts to prevent the preservation of old/obsolete formats (they call this piracy). What’s going to happen when some historian wants to read an early draft of some important scientists’ Ph.D. thesis, but finds the document is written in an old text editor for CP/M who nobody bothered to preserve? *Well, we’ll lose a lot of history, but OMG at least we respected copyrights */sarc off

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

As for CoolEditPro…apparently Adobe still owns the rights, though they obviously don’t care about the old editions much anymore (thanks, guys!). You say you’re looking on ebay; I had a look, the reviews say a lot of the CoolEdit Pro software is fake…

reviews.ebay.com/Cool-Edit-WARNING?ugid=10000000004000572

But that being said, it looks like you can buy version 2.1 for about $20 (which is pretty cheap). Is that the one you had?

ebay.com/itm/COOL-EDIT-PRO-2-1-ULTIMATE-AUDIO-EDITING-SOFTWARE-HERE-/130755014887?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e719b30e7

I can recall the old days when Microsoft Word/Wordstar/Wordperfect were battling it out for market share for word processors; they charged a couple of hundred hundred dollars for a CD-ROM that cost a dollar or two to make. Nowadays, the latest versions of Office (with all the bloatware you don’t want) still cost a couple hundred dollars. Some things never change. I found a perfectly good copy of Word97 in a thrift store for 50 cents (which has all the word processing ability most people, myself included, ever need, and is likely closer to its real value than the new stuff is LOL).

Good luck, I hope you find the program you want at a decent price.

Jacques

 

[kmaaj]

But that being said, it looks like you can buy version 2.1 for about $20 (which is pretty cheap). Is that the one you had?

ebay.com/itm/COOL-EDIT-PRO-2-1-ULTIMATE-AUDIO-EDITING-SOFTWARE-HERE-/130755014887?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e719b30e7

Thanks, it is the same version, and I saw that listing a few weeks ago. Fair use does allow for the original owner to make a copy if the original may be degraded, and the description in the listing said:

*This is a used program so it is not in the orginal packaging

YOU ARE BIDDING ON A CUSTOMIZED CD OF COOL EDIT PRO 2.1. FULL INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS WILL ARRIVE WITH THE CD.*

So I asked the owner if this was a legit copy, and did he have the original cd, even if it was unusable. That was three weeks ago, and I never got a response.