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Piracy Built the Romanian IT Industry
An anonymous reader submitted a link to a Washington Post article about a very interesting press conference. Romanian President Traian Basescu stood up in front of international press and discussed the role pirated Microsoft software played in bringing about the IT industry in the country. The other big player at the press conference was Microsoft chair Bill Gates. Gates' company was opening a technical center in Bucharest, and he declined to comment on the president's remarks. Romania passed anti-piracy laws nearly 10 years ago, but nearly 70 percent of software used in the country continues to be of an illicit nature.
"This just in: Romania destroyed by what appears to have been a bombardment of chairs. More at 11."
:)
OMFG!!!! Not the chair bombardment! Are you sure they didn't pirate 11 also? Maybe more at 12 instead.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
...is that someone of note said such things publicly.
Rampant piracy has been the norm for quite a long time in Eastern Europe & Asia.
Bill Gates most certainly knows this, but there really isn't anything he can do about it... and by opening a "global technical center" in Romania, it would seem like he is rewarding the country, regardless of their piratical ways.
Maybe it's cheap labor, maybe he sees opportunities for growth, I can't say.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Every person you can successfully move off of a windows running unauthorized windows is a gain for free software.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I live in Romania, and the fact is that many people here, after spending 500$ on a decent PC, find it hard to pay another 400$ on software (cheap computers here come with no software, or FreeDOS or Linux, and in some cases illegal Windows). So most people run pirated versions of Windows at home. In contrast, most bussinesses have legitimate licenses.
But I do not think this hurts MS too much. My reasoning is that if forced to pay for Windows, most people would spend a little more time learning to install and use Linux (it's really not that hard this days). And in the long this would result in more users proficient with Linux, and some bussinesses might also switch (not having to train employees).
So software piracy is bad, but not necessarily for the software maker.
If you build a foundation a certain practice or idea, such a piracy, it is hard to weed it out later. That being said, it seems like from the article that piracy wasn't for the simple purpose of getting software for free, but rather getting enough software out there for the country's technical economy to grow. I would think that initially it was a smart move for the country as a whole, but now that they have truly gotten into the computer field, they are experiencing the draw-back from actually participation with other nations. This seems like a correlation to what's happing in other nations that have poorer classes of people that are trying to modernize their technical standing.
"I only know 2 things: The love for me, and the fear of me."
Hey, I dunno about you guys, but at least 90 percent of the commercial software that I've used for the last 20 years has been pirated, or obtained through some other means besides paying for it. I find it hard to believe that would make me much of an oddball among the Slashdot crowd.
What's more, I concur with some of the Romanian president's comments. If it weren't for software piracy, I wouldn't have half the understanding of computers, software, and building systems out of the two, that I have today. Piracy made it possible for me to be a more valuable member of society. (I would argue that this fact is one more reason to encourage open source whenever and wherever possible.)
In comes piracy - people from developing countries and students everywhere gets to try just about any kind of software that's sold. When they're not as poor anymore, or have influence over what software their employer should invest in, they are probably a lot more likely to have formed an opinion from their previous experience with pirated software. Personally I think this kind of piracy is 100% beneficial for both users and software companies. I suspect even Bill Gates (gasp) understands this, but is unable to say anything that might sound pro-piracy.
Of course there comes a time in the progression from poor to "wealthy" (or adequately financed) where there has to be a transition from pirated to licenced software for this to hold true. People who can afford it should always buy the non-free software they use, or else I'm in trouble as a software engineer!
Your analysis isn't quite right. Dickens's works were sold without his permission in the U.S., not because it was a lawless backwater, but because Dickens was a British author. It's not that there were no copyright laws. It's just that there were no international copyright treaties. In the 19th century, British authors who wanted to secure copyright in the United States usually did so by partnering with a U.S. citizen in the publication process, and then registering the work with the U.S. copyright office under the partner's name.
Breakfast served all day!
Imagine for a moment that the Romanian government had done everything in their power to prevent software piracy. The people, most of whom had very little money a few years ago, may well have adopted a different (cheaper/free) OS and who would start paying for M$ software after realising there are some very good, free alternatives.
As it is M$ have secured dependence on their software in yet another emerging market. They may have lost millions of sales in Romania in the short term but in the long term, with a bit of political persuasion from America and the BSA, they will start to reap the rewards.
Just like Metallica's bull$#&T war against piracy Microsoft benefits from and was built on the concept of _almost every computer_ running it's software. The company might 'claim' to have a serious problem with piracy, hell they might fund major sting operations and propaganda to dissuade piracy but what they really want to dissuade is people not buying their software when they can afford to.
What they won't admit, and what would crush them completely is if they actually got rid of every pirated copy of microsoft windows in the world. If the entire country of romania never ran microsoft products, you would have an entire country of linux fans contributing to linux's evolution and coding software exclusively (or mostly) for linux platforms.
What kind of jolt would that be to Microsoft? A major one I think. But romania would have lost out as well (numbers wise), since Linux has traditionally been more complicated for new-users to use and receive support on than windows.
Metallica can afford to sue and chase-down and arrest their own fans, because after they used bootlegging of tapes to become world-famous while fans footed the bill of reproduction and distribution -- they have enough money to re-write history and say that napster is bad. How many people buy music they've never heard before? You can't sell CD's to the world by just showing off a picture of some faggy guys in tights, just like Microsoft can't possibly sell Windows to 90% of the people on earth using personal computers.
But trust me, they want to be on 90% of the computers.
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metallicas new album?
Ace
One ought to recall that not only was the American economy "built" on slavery but any other economy in the 18 and 19th century as well. Slavery be it the "indentured type", outright imported-people racial slavery (today's while slavery notwithstanding). All of Spain's and Portugal's colonies had massive amounts of slaves --see the the ratio of non-native people of African descent in Latin America. In addition, look at the situation as it was in Russia and India --sure the underclass weren't labelled slaves, but they were simply nominally not slaves. In practice they were and many were worse off than _some_ imported slaves in the Americas --I'm not trying to minimize the harship imported slaves went through, I'm pointing out that they were not the only ones exploited whose lives were "ruined" so-to-speak and whose lives had no outlook but stark misery and penury.
So, in the sense of lack of mobility, and liberty, and self-determination, economic viability many, many nations of today had "slave-based" economies back inthe days of yore.
How many
Of course, now that there are very high quality OSS programs available there's really no need to pirate MS stuff anymore.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Yeah, stereotyping an entire ethnic group as thieves is hilarious. Tune in tomorrow for Slashdot's best jokes about jews and blacks! It's okay, we're all grown-ups here.
Maybe. But the concept of treating piracy as free publicity only works when you don't have an enormous stake in the current offerings, as many game companies do.
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But take another subset of piracy nowadays: Games. So what if tons of people play a game? You can't get money from them later on for having experienced that game. I didn't pay more for Oblivion just because I pirated Morrowind.
So piracy can be useful, and harmful.
I agree. Business software is not games. Piracy of business software, especially by home users, only serve to further entrench the software, as users may demand that software from their employers, while getting used to one game does not mean getting used to the next game too.