Before You Pirate Recording Studio Software, Read This...

I remember my first real computer-based recording studio. Several years ago, before Pro Tools LE and Logic Express, Cool Edit Pro was one of the only multitrack-ready software packages available. My friends and I spent many hours hacking together projects on that software -- and I can't recall ever paying a dime for the software. Yes, all of my software was pirated at one point.

As time went on, I realized that pirated software wasn't nearly the bargain it looked to be on the outside. There's a lot of reasons why pirating software is a terrible idea -- and why you should avoid the piracy trap in your own studio.

Pirated software hurts small businesses.

While it's easy for people at home to think of every business as a financially-sound, large well-oiled machine, there's a simple economic fact that most people don't think about: many software companies are small businesses, in some cases running from the homes of the software developers themselves. Piracy hurts businesses because it's taking away the income from a product that these software developers depend upon to pay their bills every month.

Buying software legally allows software developers, especially the small guys, to stay in business; without people buying their software, they'd have to close their doors.

Pirated software offers no technical support.

How often do you get into a recording session and find that things aren't going the way you want them to? On a good day, it's not often that things go wrong in the studio (at least, wishfully thinking), but when they do, it's nice to have somewhere to turn. Buying software entitles you to one-on-one technical support, and the benefits of having technical support are vast.

Capture a once-in-a-lifetime take that you need help mixing, and your software is acting funky? Call tech support. They'll get you straightened out, and it's a nice feeling knowing that you've got a virtual safety net when things do go wrong.

Pirated software can be very unstable.

While there's exceptions to every rule, most software released today has some sort of anti-piracy or mandatory registration features. These features are designed to make sure that either a serial number has been entered, or a "phone home" feature has been activated, verifying that the software is legitimately purchased.

Software pirates go through great lengths to crack copy protection, many times at a cost of stability; pirated software is, in many cases, a lot less stable than it's legitimately-licensed counterparts, thanks to the background programming that goes into defeating anti-piracy measures.

Software piracy halts progress.

While it may seem dramatic, my final tip about software piracy is this: buying your software is extremely important, because without your financial support, you're putting the brakes on the natural evolution of our technology that we depend on as recording engineers. Downloading and installing pirated software directly takes research & development funds out of the pockets of software engineers and product developers everywhere.

Without the R&D progress that most of these companies make, many of the advancements we use today may not have came as soon as they did. Think about that next time you're AutoTuning.