Which company is more aggressive toward pirates? Autodesk or Dassault?

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.

24 comments

Adobe is lax about it because they care about being the industry standard monopoly. When more people use their software and become proficient in it, more companies want to buy it so they have better hiring prospects, and Adobe wins.

The stories I've heard about most CAD companies, especially Dassault, is that they don't generally care about the pirated software, and if they do, the worst they'll do if you're just a hobbyist is send you a "cut it out dude" cease and desist.

The problems arise when you start using their software for anything that makes money, like sending models/drawings to other companies/clients or whatever. If youre trying to run a business with pirated software they will absolutely pin your ass to the wall with lawyers and go after every cent you earned using their software PLUS the cost of a full license PLUS whatever damages they feel like pulling out of their ass.

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- I could be wrong but isn't it essentially impossible to pirate modern versions of Adobe Creative Suite products as they're now cloud based, meaning the only versions you can pirate are around 10 years old?
  
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  I was able to pirate photoshop for somebody just last year but it's definitely a bit more in depth than just clicking a magnet link iirc. Doable on windows fs, unsure abt Linux and mac.
  
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  No
  
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- they don't generally care about the pirated software
  
  It feels like SolidSquad is working for Dassault lol. They want people to learn it so they can sell software to companies that makes money from it
  
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- like sending models/drawings to other companies/clients or whatever.
  
  How can they tell if a document was made on a pirated copy? And how might one avoid that detection
  
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  You can never share any of the software specific formats ever (.ipt for inventor, .dwg for Autocad, .sldprt for solidworks, etc). All those formats include fingerprints inside that are not user visible or modifyable but include detailed info about the copy of the software license that created it. If anyone else ever opens those with a legit copy, the software itself phone home about it and they'll know, because whatever license the pirate copy shows will not exist on Autodesk/Dassault/whatever's side.
  
  Platform agnostic formats likely embed this kind of Metadata too somewhere, but it can probably be stripped, and most of the time when sharing an agnostic for.at like .step/.stl the opening software is not made by autodesk or whoever.
  
  Finally it could just legit be a user report. Companies like autodesk have a reporting system to send evidence of suspected pirated software use directly to their legal teams. It doesnt happen often but if youre using like a 7 year old copy of Inventor and something feels off... yeah. So you're never truly safe if you have to share your models at all.
  
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Nintendo,the rest are all "wannabes".

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How would Autodesk or Dassault discover that you are using a pirated copy of their software in the first place?

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- 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.
  
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  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.
  
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- Maybe you dont completely block the software in firewall so it phones home. Or you send someone a cad file which has metadata inside, they open it in legitimate software version and then it phones home your info. Or you connect pirated version to a network where is also another legitimate version which phones home.
  
  Yes, you could say "just use simplewall and deny by default" or "run it in VM" or "dont send anyone cad filed created in pirated version". But that's not the point. The point of my question is, IF you make mistake and the software has a chance to phone home, how much danger there is?
  
  Of course there is always some danger. That's why I am just asking about comparing Autodesk and Dassault and if it's possible to determinate that one is more eager to catch pirates than the other.
  
  Thanks.
  
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I recently pirated autocad for a friend. While i was looking into it I saw a couple people who recieved letters telling them to stop and one even claimed they required them to scan the pc with some software and send them the results. Also, according to some redittors, other programs on the pc, even those not made by autodesk may snitch on you. So we started looking to foss alternatives, which there are some good ones btw, but in the end we just said "fuck it" and pirated it anyways because we needed to open .dwg files and autodesk had the brilliant idea of making it a proprietary format so they gave us no choice. What were they expecting us to do? Pay? lol

Its been about a month since, no problems so far.

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- I agree with the foss alternatives part. FreeCAD isn't great, but I've been loving ondsel lately which is a fork that improves the interface and even sends some pull requests to the upstream. 😊
  
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  Havent heard of ondsel, I'll check it out. Thanks! ^.
  
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- Go with CATIA or something that's a bit less targeted at home players.
  
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  I'll check it out too. Thanks again!
  
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Adobe

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you want to pirate autodesk software when blender exists?

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- Blender is not a CAD tool. And it’s not trying to be.
  
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