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Piracy Built the Romanian IT Industry

Posted by Zonk on from the eye-patches-in-europe dept.

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.

6 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Could Be the Philanthropist in Him by eldavojohn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe it's cheap labor, maybe he sees opportunities for growth, I can't say.
    Or maybe, just maybe, he thinks that if he does something kind towards them, they'll embrace him back and won't think of him as a faceless corporate billionaire from which it's ok to steal?

    The United States economy was initially built on slavery, but I don't hold it against them because they've cleaned up their act. If you sold drugs to make enough money for rent but quit once you were on your feet in a job, I wouldn't hold it against you. Yeah, I realize those are flame bait analogies but that's just how I feel. If Romania's infrastructure was built on piracy, I certainly hope they clean up their act--there are plenty of FOSS alternatives out there that are not as well supported as Windows apps but certainly can do the job with a lot of time and effort.

    What they're doing is illegal. I hope the president was acknowledging this and leveling with Gates so rarely does a politician shoot straight, let's enjoy this rare moment.
    --
    My work here is dung.
  2. Piracy kickstarted the US publishing industry by Frankie70 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    US refused to pass any copyright laws in the publishing industry
    till the time there were enough US authors whose rights needed
    to be protected. When Charles Dickens visited the US, he saw his
    books sold legally all over the place & he wasn't getting a penny
    out of these sales. He complained to the US Govt repeatedly but
    of no avail.

    But publishers who were "pirating" his books in the US made
    enough money to kickstart the publishing industry in the US.
    Then a time came when there were enough US authors whose
    rights had to be protected & that's when the relavant laws
    were passed & enforced in the US.

    Something similiar is happening in Romania wrt the software
    industry.

  3. Third hand, but I never doubted him... by Fishbulb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One of my Comp. Sci. professors gave a talk to our ACM chapter about once a year or semester, describing his experience as a computer scientist in Russia. He had worked on a chess-playing program back in the '70s, and became a professor there.

    Part of the talk was the history of Russian computing. Essentially, it was a lot of reverse-engineering of big IBM's. IIRC, it was Romainia that was assigned the task of reverse engineering the system OS machine code. Having to do it this way gave the programmers intimate knowledge of systems and assembly, and consequentially in the 80's produced some hardcore virus & worm coders.

    So I wouldn't really expect their attitude toward software to be quite the same...

  4. Other country by w_lighter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well... same thing in Malaysia, Indonesia and China... Alto anti piracy law exist for such a long time, ppl just dont gives a rats ass abt it simply because law enforcement officer thamself is also using them. You think they use original software on the personal computer? Yeah rite~~~~~

  5. Re:I guess the only surprising thing... by wathiant · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." And that is exactly the difference between 'real property' theft and 'intellectual property' theft. In the first case, you want them to steal from your competitors, as it will hurt their business and give you a relative advantage. In the second case, you want people to steal from you, as it will get them addicted to your product so they will ignore your competitors. If you have 'property' that you would gladly have people steal just so they become addicted to it, don't you technically waive the rights to that property?
  6. He wasn't proud about it... by mariushm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In 1990-1993, Romania just started to understand what democracy is, there was no concept of licenses, rights much like in other countries (see for example the story of Tetris and its licensing problems on Google Video). Even more, there was barely any economy and computers used to cost a fortune. A computer I think used to cost about 6 or 7 salaries, without software.
    Also, even if you wanted to buy legally software, there were no companies that could legally license you software. You couldn't buy software legally because the percent of users buying software was so small, it was not profitable for companies to make stock of software products.

    Later, companies started to build computers and offered preinstalled software and operating systems legally but even then there were problems with gray market (smaller companies could not afford to compete with large computer builders buying license in large volume and used to buy small volume of windows licenses from Hungary and other countries - later the BSA declared these licenses not valid and companies had problems).

    Nowadays, almost all companies are using licensed software because there are laws about it and whenever the government has to prove something to the European Union or licking USA's ass .. police raids companies or finds hackers or people guilty of piracy.

    With home users, piracy is larger but that's mostly because some people can not afford it. The minimum wage is about 120 dollars and Windows is about 140 dollars (if you included taxes).. Private companies offer wages usually starting from 300 dollars.

    So our president is right, but you don't have to take it like he agreed to it and thought it was OK. It was not but you can't change the past.