These are the choices that I face as an independent freelance. I am careful with my money, but also fairly flexible. This is analogous to the situation of small architects' practices, although the volumes of high-quality information that they have to move about are greater, and so are their costs. In larger organisations the budgets will be in place, but there will also be protocols, and an individual is unlikely to be able to make a payment or download software without management approval. Somehow we all still feel that moving data around and sharing it should be free or free-ish. It never has been of course. Think not only of postage, but of the many messengers who used to move drawings and documents around cities, and of the costs of printing and binding. The internet has confused us all and just as there are problems with illegal downloads of music and film in the consumer market, so there are fairly regular swoops on practices in the architectural world for software piracy - much of which is the result of muddle and misunderstanding rather than a real desire to rob. It is an area where we all need to become wiser - and faster, and a little poorer.

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