It's not an argument, it's an acknowledgment of a possibility that exists and the reasons that it does. What I'm getting at is the issue of software piracy is caused by issues bigger than what we can solve here - apart from playing whack-a-mole with reuploaders and/or crippling your own software with DRM, the latter of which is not going to happen here without some staggering abandonment of ZorinOS's design philosphy. There's really no way to make it truly impossible, so unless the underlying causes are addressed (namely convenience - like I said before though, in Zorin Pro's case you're not even getting convenience, I find it hilarious that anyone would think to pirate it when the core of the OS is given out for free, but I can understand why someone more involved in the organization would find that less amusing than insulting/upsetting), it's a side effect of the fact that unlike cars and bread loaves, the buyer can make copies essentially for free. Unless you mean "may" in the "is allowed" sense rather than the "is possible" sense, in which case that is not an argument I have made and not an argument I will likely ever make.
Another component here is the "freemium" model, but that too has similar root economic causes: the freemium model has created a software environment and culture that is so categorically stingy and abusive to its own userbase that "premium" or "pro" features have been getting pirated out of spite (and because they are increasingly just parts of the core experience being cut out and sold separately for total sums that are beyond the scope of what people can afford; see Sims 4 DLC and the DLC model ParadoxPlaza used to use). I think Zorin Pro showing up on pirating sites is just ZorinOS's very fair premium model getting hit in the crossfire of that erosion of what "premium" means.
I like this in principle. Unfortunately the people responsible for these disparities have a great deal of overlap with those who decide what counts as committing crimes, and they can and will (and have, historically) adjust those definitions to protect themselves and their advantaged position. But again, more of a broad systemic issue - I do agree that software piracy in general is not contributing to remedying these disparities.
I want to be clear here, as soon as I figure out whether or not the balenaEtcher the official installation instructions linked to bricked the 32GB SanDisk Cruzer I've been using for over a decade, I intend to purchase the pro version, because I respect this OS and I respect the people behind it. Maybe I'll make a thread about that balenaEtcher issue first, though... I think it might have corrupted the firmware somehow.
to show our support.
