Waves BanPiracy thing

Guess what?

I think that Waves "BanPiracy" thing is a GREAT idea.

Well... if you ignore all the unethical and entrapment side of it... :)

The idea of going after *commercial studios* using pirate software is bang on the money. No 15yr-old kids suffer - just the people using stolen software so that they can spend their budget on beer and cakes. It gets the dishonest users, and leaves alone the people still trying to make it.

Truth is, if you run a COMMERCIAL, PRO studio, and you are SELLING studio time, and you use cracked plugins, then you are a BASTARD of the first order, and you deserve whatever you get, frankly.

To put this in the context of my earlier postings, commercial studios who use cracks are the "dishonest users" who make a mockery of us all. These are people who can afford the software, and choose to take the piss. By the time you are running a full-time business selling studio time, you have earned the responsibility of not using stolen gear. A pro-studio wouldn't use a stolen mixing desk eh?

Now, I'm sure this strategy isn't infallible - I've heard stories of studios who have been essentially entrapped and done-over by Waves, and obviously that's not the way to go.

But if you are a bastard, and guilty as sin, and you get caught, please, for the sake of my faith in humanity, do the decent thing. Treat it as a wake-up call.

When I first heard about the BanPiracy scheme, I felt a wave of general outrage, as I generally do whenever someone does anything like this, and that whoever it was would be saying goodbye to the idea of having customers pretty quick. However, once I realised that it was EXPLICITLY targeting people who have NO excuse AT ALL for using cracks, I calmed down. BanPiracy (so i'm told) targets the MAJOR studios - ones that major labels pay a few $1000s per hour to. There's just no excuse for ripping off developers for them. Now, even if BanPiracy is getting "the wrong" people, it's always going after people who are actually selling studio time to clients. If that's you, and you use cracked software, then I DARE you to try and construct an ethically defensible position that doesn't make you sound like a crack dealer.
Anyone starting with "I'll let my paying customers use legitimate copies of the software when my business is running well enough" will result in me sending the rozzers down to their yard, if only because of how stupid it made them sound, and how annoying it is that anyone can actually be that stupid.

Now, I'm not saying that /I'd/ ever want to be involved with anything like this - there just IS WAY too much span for accidental entrapment and such, but at least Waves have enough of a clue to target the right people.