Pet Peeves

This is a quick blog entry so that I can vent and not have to throw my coffee cup through Mom's window. I hate, hate, HATE buying software and then being told that I can't use the software on more than one computer.

I bought a copy of "GoodSync" to help with my backups, and apparently they have their activation service locked down to a single copy/installation.

This is like buying a hammer in Home Depot and being told that you can only use it in one room, or in one house.

And I won't even go into the problems I had after paying Adobe $1000 for Photoshop and Lightroom.

Something has to change. We're in the dark ages of intellectual property law. Piracy is bad and people should be paid for their work. But right now you have pirates on the one side, software companies and people like the RIAA on the other side, arguing like Bill O'Reilly might argue with Amy Goodman -- with reasonable usage rights and common sense solutions nowhere to be found.

How hard would it be to include, say, five activiations for a software package being used at home by a single family? Would they be losing money? I can tell you that I'm sure as hell not going to buy a second copy of GoodSync. And in fact, they've lost my business; I'll never upgrade with them.

And really, how many people are running around pirating copies of GoodSync? What do they think they're selling? Photoshop? And even Photoshop grants you a licence for two computers.