Talk:VOCALOID Piracy/@comment-36843431-20180910060650/@comment-53539-20180910113444

Because this wasn't an opinion 8 years ago. People want the best of something without paying for it, so there will always be a lot of people after the free versions. These people have no intention of forking out money regardless for items they want, "why buy it when there is a version for free one download away". This is true for those who can't Vocaloid mostly, but you also get those who can who won't.

A lot of those who download it will then upload stuff on youtube hoping for easy popularity or use it as a toy to voice whatever they please. There is a certain amount of fans who don't realise that professional software isn't for everyone and is designed for a specific target market in mind. In their minds hey have Len's vocal for example and that is all that matters. Typically, the average Pocaloid user is basically a teenage weaboo who has seen a certain character from Vocaloid and wants in even if they have no music skills.

We have had UTAU and Alter/ego, but their poor quality overall. UTAU was never accepted in Japan as a legit HQ software as the reason downloaded it was to own the means to create their own character or vocal they can control. UTAU was essentially the death of the Vocaloid OC. Alter/ego used the same engine as Chipspeech, but what worked in Chipspeech didn't work when applied to real vocals and the vocals aren't that well rendered. It works for Chipspeech because most of the characters are robotic and the reason of the engine is minor, plus CS uses a variety of engine options. So you can different synthesising styles in one software, which was the advantage of the engine. So Vocaloid has been for a while the overall best result you could get.

We later had CeVIO turn up during V3, though it wasn't as good as Vocaloid it did singing AND vocal, which made it a cheap alternative to Vocaloid + Voiceroid and I believe its cheaper... But with less options then Vocaloid offers in terms of vocals.

We now have Synth V with us and its about the best so far any free engine has been and only has been out for a month tops (forget the date).

Honestly so long as one person wants Len, Miku, etc without willing to pay for it, there is always going to be a illegal crack of it. The ads on these sites earn money for the site and some cases the uploaders, so people don't realise it, but they put money into the hands of a lot of pirated software unknowingly. Pirating itself, I've seen a lot of excuses for the groups doing it and the original Team Ass used the excuse they were calling Yamaha out on the bugs of their software... But Yamaha then fixed *those* bugs and Team Ass's version had bugs of its own it added. Plus illegal and legal didn't always get along for a while.

Regardless, while there is no legit reason to crack software and no legit reason to download pirated stuff, its just greed and selfishness, one also can't do anything about any of it. We can't go around policing people who do it, their often too poor or just don't care and unless they get sent to jail they won't listen. I've been in a lot of fandoms and there can be benefits to having pirated versions of things but it doesn't always work. For example, One Piece has a fandom thats large and you can help fund it a variety of ways. You don't have to buy a single issues of the many or a copy of the DVD, you could just buy a figurine or T-Shirt even. Its unfortunate with Vocaloid there are not many options for some software, but in One Piece's case Oda could stop writing the manga tomorrow... And he'd still earn enough from sales of merchandise for several years to come. This worked for Dragonball and for a few years its Mangaka never put anything new in. So the manga is just the reference in OP's case to produce more merchandise based off of to get more money in and Oda earns more from it. In Vocaloid, you can encourage producers to use certain vocals buy buying albums of that character, this is the best attempt to do the same thing.