Scott McDonald wrote in message <37193873.8F4B0122@metrolink.com>...
>Lance Birch wrote:
>>
>> Hmm, let me think... It's illegal?
>>
>> Personally I hate people that pirate MAX... mainly because it raises the
>> price for me... and also because I'm sick of seeing terrible work made
with
>
>naw, thats a convenient excuse for Autodesk to charge a ridiculous
>amount of money for it.
[snip]

Crap!

This is one of the dumbest but unfortunately most used arguments in the
discussion about pirate copies.

And it just isn't true!

Mark well, I don't want to defend the price of MAX here in particular (I am
certain that part of the money you pay goes into the "image" and the "name"
of the product, just as SGI workstations or Apple Computers [or many other
high-tech prodcuts from elite-brands - anyone bought a pair of Nike shoes
lateley? See, you paid for the image too!] are not really worth the money
they cost - if you simply add up the cost for the hardware components.

The point I want to make is, that software is not expensive because software
firms are asking ridiculous prices which they only can get away with because
there is no alternative. In reality, software is so expensive because it
simply *is* very expensive to develop.
Especially such large projects as MAX. I would guess (totally without
underlying facts, but close to the truth I guess) that there easily went
several centuries of man-work into the development of MAX. (A small team of
25 working for 4 years would already add up to one century!)
And the people developing the software are not some underpaid and exploited
third-world "slaves" but highly educated professionals that, justily, demand
good money for good work. Add this together with the costs for promotion
etc., and you will soon see why a software that is sold in such
(comparativly) small numbers as MAX will always cost a *lot*.

And Lance is right:

Kinetix is putting effort (and money!) into developing protection (dongles
etc.) which they wouldn't need in a perfect world. It is clear that at the
end the customer pays for this added costs.
This doesn't even count the lost revenues from pirated software that was not
sold (and therefor did not add to the total income made with the product).


Johannes.

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