Lets say you pirate CAD software like Autodesk Inventor or Dassault Solidworks.
Which company is more aggressive toward pirates? Which software is more dangerous to pirate?
For example I heard Adobe is pretty lax about piracy and it’s usually no big deal if you pirate Photoshop. So I wonder how it is with CAD companies.
I have seen a lot of posts about people receiving letter from Dassault about pirated Solidworks. But not so much about Autodesk. So I wonder if Autodesk software is safer to pirate than Dassault software.
Thanks for any advice or experience.
A. Their software phones home aggressively.
B. Their software embeds unique digital fingerprints in every file created with it. If other legit Autodesk software opens those files, it knows. They can and will use that to track pirated users. The neat part is, they don’t care about your priated software until you’re verifiably using it to make money, at which point they will open up your asshole with a speculum and go fishing.
On the tracking and phoning home: gross, I wish they didn’t do that. I’ll stick with FreeCAD.
It makes sense though, that they don’t care about pirated software unless you’re making money off it. It’s probably in their interest of hobbyists can learn how to use the software from pirated copies - that’s just a potential future paid user, if they develop the skills to eventually want to use it professionally.