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Z-Library Helps Students to Overcome Academic Poverty, Study Finds

(torrentfreak.com)
326 points hn_acker | 2 comments | 20 Nov 24 23:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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bastard_op ◴[21 Nov 24 01:17 UTC] No.42200020[source]▶
Some 28 years ago I taught myself everything could get/find from graphic design, basic development, server administration, etc, all downloading commercial warez over dial-up with AOL and Usenet. I didn't need a class or subscriptions, with every software and book I could have wanted, I had the best lab in the world with any software available I could want with piracy.

Fast forward 30 years now it's mostly the same as it was, only open source replaced all the commercial, and little has changed that I can still get the rest too. You can pay as much or little as you want in life if you know how.

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siamese_puff ◴[21 Nov 24 05:39 UTC] No.42201460[source]▶
100% agree with this. Every kid in the 2000s pirated Adobe software. It was almost a badge of honor to have every Adobe icon on your desktop.

These kids learned the Adobe suite and probably became professionals as a result, then purchasing the software legally for their entire company. Piracy isn’t bad, in fact, it probably makes these companies money in many cases.

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1. instagraham ◴[21 Nov 24 07:00 UTC] No.42201835[source]▶
If one didn't have access to Adobe in those days and had to instead make do with Paint.net or GIMP, a lot of people wouldn't have made it into media and publishing today (where they now, as you pointed out, bill their companies $1000s to use Adobe's products).

Hate to say it but the difference in output quality between GIMP and Photoshop really shows and can make the difference between your work looking amateur or professional - ie getting your first job.

I know I know, it's about the operator not the tool, but not everyone has the mindset to grind through GIMP's UI and stackexchange troubleshooting forums when there are tutorials for everything Adobe on YouTube. Some of these people can still be great designers.

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2. ivell ◴[21 Nov 24 07:16 UTC] No.42201906[source]▶
Or it would have forced the open source tooling to get improved. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. A lot of features in the open source tooling is due to an itch that needed to be scratched. I think without piracy, the open-source software would have had even better feature set.