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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.
"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."
"See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor. "
No problem here...business as usual...
As the big player, Microsoft will have to contend with issue for a long, long time.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
This just in: Romania destroyed by what appears to have been a bombardment of chairs. More at 11.
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
...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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, MS owes Romania. You see, MS has been using the vampire method of business: sucking the blood of their customers. A clear rip-off of the vampire business model.
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.
Yea, blame microsoft for not having a life! It was microsoft that made me a total loser!
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."
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...Slavery built the British empire, and the tea trade!
ilovegeorgebush
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.
It's not full of gypsies, sir. It's just bad publicity. You hardly see any.
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.
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!
Even reading just the very *first sentence of *wikipedia's article on socialism could've helped you avoid revealing your ignorance in this regard.
"Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control."
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
A: Romania is officially a democratic republic.
B: "socialist" is a broad term which can refer to many kinds of government.
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.
It seems to me that much more than 70% of EVERYTHING done in that country is of an illicit nature. Phishing, ebay fraud, virus creation, drive by trojan-installing websites, credit card theft, identity theft, child porn, spamming, boasting about spamming, fake escrow companies, fake banks, money laundering Etc. etc.
The only time I ever hear about anything from Romania it's usually tied to some illicit operation, and the conclusion is always the same: this is the way life is in Romania. Period. Nobody will ever change it. It's aggravating.
While I expect several non-illegal Romanians to chime in that that's a generalist statement, I have a lot of evidence to back all of that up, as do most international law enforcement entities.
Their IT "industry" claims would be awesome if more of it was involved in legitimate business. It's disappointing that even their own government doesn't seem to care about their reputation as an illegal, corrupt haven for criminals of every stripe.
SiL
-- SiL / IKS / concerned citizen
Uh, what? Fuck that shit. I live in Romania since I was born and the level of technical education is nothing close to high. Most of the IT professionals I know are either self taught, either have gone to university to another country.
But what the president said it's true. And you should have seen the "WTF did that dude just say" look on Billie's face.
This is not your signature.
Al Capone says bootlegging built the Prohibition Era retail alchohol industry. Elliot Ness declines to comment.
Arellano Felix says drug mules built the Medellin Cartel's cocaine industry. DEA spokesmen decline to comment.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Eh, communism fell (at least officially) December 1989. As of today Romania has been a member of the EU for a full month.
Then again the story could be bollocks - can anyone confirm / deny this?
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
That the Romanian IT industry shackled themselves to an aggressive and intolerant multinational corporation for their operating system and many valuable software tools, instead of taking the initiative to create their own operating systems and tools, free of Microsoft's interference and encumbrance.
These Romanian IT professionals should be ashamed of themselves, admitting in public that they knowingly (and criminally, not that Slashdot cares) signed up for Microsoft's bullshit instead of crafting their own IT resources.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Romanians survived 25 years under Ceauescu. I don't think they will cuddle up with Big Brother again any time soon. Their president knows that. Gates might too.
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.
I must bring to Slashdot attention that at some point authorithies in Romania started to heavily break down on software without a license. Which licence must've been bought from somewhere.
Belive it or not, this crackdown didn't focus on pirated Windows or Adobe software; it focused on in-house development and Linux and GPL'ed programs!
To this day a law still stands that _requires_ that every program ever made in the country be registered with a central authority, which would license it to the developer (for a fee), so that developer and the users have it "Licensed".
Now, I'm not sure if this was somehow forced by local BSA (a rumour said so) or anything like it, but now it's still good that nobody enforces anymore that bill.
My 55 cents,
Carefully crafted sig.
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.
---
metallicas new album?
Ace
Jet Engines (Henri Coanda) and the Coanda Effect in aerodynamics.
The first gymnast ever to score a perfect "ten".
Constantin Brancusi in Scultpture.
Alexandru Ciurcu invented with M.M. Just Buisson the first Reactive Engine
Anastase Dragomir invented the parachute cell, predecessor of the ejection seat
Dragomir Hurmuzescu inventor of the first high tension dynamo
Rodrig Goliescu invented the first tubular airplane
Dracula for the SCI-FI fans and last but not least important: the Cheeky Girls(at least the brits seem to love them) and Ozone (I can't seem to forget the drunk austrians in Vienna new-years 2005 when all they sang was a "Hey, baby" remix chorus and Ozone's own "Dragostea din tei").
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.
Take off the rose colored glasses and see how the world really works:
In 1842 there was still no international copyright law, a condition that was stunting American letters and depriving authors on both sides of the Atlantic of a living. Britain was willing to recognize the copyright of foreign writers--but only if their countries reciprocated.
This American publishers adamantly refused to do. Instead, they competed in bribing English pressmen to get early sheets of British books. The sheets were rushed by boat over to the United States, where the jolly pirates churned out cheap editions in a matter of hours.
But it was not only British authors they were robbing. Few publishers were willing to pay American authors for books when they could purloin better-known British ones for free. Herman Melville was hurt by the lack of an international copyright, and such eminent American authors as Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne had to pay publishers an advance, rather than vice versa, in order to have their books produced. The early giants of American literature had to scramble for work at customhouses and in other government jobs, and Edgar Allan Poe, according to his biographer Sidney P. Moss, had to raise advance money for one collection of poems by soliciting 75 cents a head from his fellow West Point classmates, to whom he then dedicated the book.
"The Americans read [Dickens}; the free, enlightened, independent Americans; and what more would he have?... As to telling them they will have no literature of their own, the universal answer (out of Boston) is, 'We don't want one. Why should we pay for one when we can get it for nothing.'"
Copy Wrong
As opposed to 50 to 60 percent in the United States. hmmm...
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
we must teach the romanians how to properly use the apostrophe (') key instead of using the tick/grave (`) key.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
What does communism have to do with Romania, which is a socialist democratic republic? Do you mean that they started pirating DOS under the soviet umbrella in the 80's, and haven't bothered to stop?
Damn Romulans. what do you think the Klingons are up to?
by charging double, triple, X20 what it's worth.
yet, I stil yearn to cry for microsoft's lost income. where did I put the kleenex?
you think this is big, just wait till Russia comes clean. and Gates will just be glad they don't break his arms.
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.
I think not. Ok it's good news for Romania and the economy there (hopefully) but for every person who cheers for this there's a developer somewhere shivering. Microsoft is large and big. Ok but that's not why 70 percent of their software is pirated. The people who created and marketed the Operating system is not getting their money from that software. I don't care what you're opinion is of Microsoft, that's not right.
Even if you're cheering for this, imagine if it was Linux that had a 10 dollar licensing fee per copy, that money goes in to improving future versions of linux, everyone pays it, however we find out that Romania is pirating the software with out paying for the future development costs. The whole point is that this story is the whole reason anti-piracy is in place, because the piracy in the story sounds like it's done for piracy sake. Just because it helps one place, doesn't mean that it's good or beneficial overall.
It's good if it entrenches a critical application or set of applications with huge numbers of people and you can somehow get future profit out of it.
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.
Just because piracy doesn't lose people who would never buy it to begin with doesn't mean that it can't also lose people who would have bought it. Critical people.
| - | - |
Would you have been as likely to buy Oblivion is you had not played (legitimate or not) Morrowind?
A lot of people who play games are people who aren't old enough to have jobs to buy them. Then, they get jobs, and buy games.
I spent a few months there a couple years ago. I haven't seen any properly licensed software being used. Not once. NEVER! People invariably looked at me funny when I even mentioned this. :) I generally disagree with the pimp-style welcome Gates received (VIsta flags on boulevards and the like), but I agree with what the president said regarding piracy. I think that MS gained more by ignoring piracy.
Anyway, you cannot tell the same thing about businesses. Most of them run legal software. ... it would become clear to you if you spent a couple days walking around the Redmond campus.
I live in Romania. I run Gentoo and sometimes a pirated version of XP. Should I feel ashamed? I'm not, sorry. It is true, most home users run pirated software. They buy World of Warcraft though
Its very amusing to me the bias people have about this country. Theft, crime, child porn??? You do know that Romania is a member of the EU, don't you? Its like saying that America's full of teens who murder their school mates after playing CS.. Its not like that, right? As to why MS would open a tech centre in Bucharest
People say that romanian is the second spoken language at microsoft, after english. Could someone please confirm this? I think that MS opened this tech support center here because of:
- cheap and qualified workforce
- blackmail material to enforce its agenda in EU(software patents anyone?)
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us
Well, it can't. Although if you know of a democratic goverment doing that, let me know so I can avoid it. Unless of course you were talking about the US, which I would like to remind you is a REPUBLIC, not a democracy.
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.
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...
Our dumbhead president apparently tried to be nice, and managed to botched it.
He should have consulted someone more knoledgable, but even then, it takes a lot of
effort & active indoctrination to make an outsider understand all this
'intellectual property' nonsense.
For a rational human being, it's just as hard to find copyright infringement morally
repulsive as it is for a non-bigot to consider sex outside marriage a mortal sin.
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.
| - | - |
Fair enough, certainly can't argue the point that you don't gain market share in as helpful a way in the game industry from piracy... if your company can survive the piracy, it does give you mindshare that may help you in the future, but a big part of the problem is surviving on the margins in the mean time.
Although, to be fair, smaller business application shops could probably say something similar about their own product.
So? I did piracy(although it wasn't called that at the time) played sports and had sex with the ladies when I was in high school.
I think that means I win.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Copyright and Patent are the antithesis of the Communistic and socialistic philosophy. Of course their culture break copyright treaty.
They aren't communists anymore, but sme parts of that era will continue for a long time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together can tell that he was JOKING. You are supposed to laugh AT him, not WITH him. Mod Great Grandparent UP if you don't like Slashdot (not to mention the Western World)being taken over by oversensitive PC-pushing humorless crybabies.
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~~~~~
Piracy also built the American entertainment industry, got liquor prohibition repealed, might get other senseless prohibitions repealed, including that of spreading information. Get enough people to violate a law and that law ceases to exist. Too bad we never simply vote for freedom. We always have to "steal" it.
What?
Let's not forget lots of brilliant Romanian programmers.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Property is theft.
And err ... about the so-called "moral" aspects. Let's not forget that industrialisation in the US was based on wholesale suspension of foreign patents. All of them. Endorsed by the founding fathers! But it turned out ok in the end, right, after the US grew into a big market?
And let's not forget that there is no danger of any major software company getting hurt. let alone going bankrupt because of piracy.
And before we wax indignant about piracy in a semi-developing country somewhere in Eastern Europe, lets think for a moment shall we? They joined the EU, so they'll have to clean up their act ... even if it takes a decade. By the time they become a significant trade partner they will by and large behave lawfully. So is there anything here to loose any over? I think not.
Excuse me, but you are assuming that every Romanian citizen has a computer. It appears to me that your worldview has been incredibly skewed. Maybe it's time to put down the mouse and venture out of the basement.
i made the mistake of shelving my commodore64 for girls, keg parties, and sports...
"Its very amusing to me the bias people have about this country. Theft, crime, child porn??? "
...
... and I was just an observer.
I must admit, I don't know anything about the child porn stuff - although there were the two kids somewhere in Oltenia making and selling a "home movie" a couple years ago. Remember?
As for the theft, crime corruption and the like, let me ASSURE you that it's worse than majority Western Europeans imagine.
Maybe in the circles YOU are mingling in it's all nice and on the level, but, I have traveled a lot around the country and have a LOT of friends there. Since I will probably be going back in spring, I can't give specific details, statute of limitations notwithstanding, but, it's pretty bad.
For example, think trucks that were snatched out of EU and registered in Romania - "recarosat" for those who speak Romanian. Think Chief of police in one of the provinces with navigable water ways who ordered a 30.000 Euro motorboat from a photo album - pictures taken in Belgian harbors, he paid 6.000 Euro. Think ex military intelligence colonel who owns a string of construction companies, and more politicos than Becali owns sheep. Think of someone who doesn't even know the difference between wheat and barley and makes tens of thousands of Euro through SAPARD "loans".
Shit, I knew about the Mona Musca issue quite a few days before it became public
I could go on and on and on
So, yeah Western Europeans have GOOD reason to be "biased".
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Romanian salaries are 10 times lower than in the US - if MS would sell Windows 10 times cheaper than in the US, most Romanians would buy it... no comment.
Currently, Windows costs about 3 months of a student's scholarship, or almost a month of a beginner engineer's net income.
With patents is exactly the same.
When you study the history of industrial development you see that every country starts its industrial development with a period when it doesn't pay much attention to "intellectual property". The closer it comes to the international economical top the more it becomes obsessed with it.
You can see it now in China. Prior you could see it in Taiwan and Japan and yet further back you could see it in the US and most of Europe. The only one not guilty is the UK: they were the first.
It makes sense: the rich countries write the rules to their own advantage.
It is just not polite to say this kind of things too loud. This Rumanian president should learn some manners...
He maybe could. Microsoft's market value is $299 billion and Romania's GDP is $219 billion.
So say we all
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.
.. police raids companies or finds hackers or people guilty of piracy.
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
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.
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls, but :
Server:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES
Basic Support $349
Standard Support $799
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS
Standard Support $1499
Premium Support $2499
Client:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS
Basic Support $179
Standard Support $299
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop
Proxy Starter Pack $2500
Extension Pack $3500
And this is only RedHat there are other commercial linuxes around, ranging from nokia's 770 and 880 to enterprises markets like redhat's one. So my guess is that the market is bearing linux and OSS quite well.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
The original post was far from funny, and categorising anyone who disagrees with you as "PC pushing humorless crybabies" says a lot more about you than the people you're trying to insult.
Stupid people think it's cool. Smart people thinks it's a joke; also cool.
----
*no Microsoft engineers were injured in this... experiment
Much like the cost of FOSS reflects what the market will bear.
It's a good way of thinking about it - but since the costs are zero for acquisition, the real cost is the time put into improvements. So the quality of OSS is what the market will bear.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Just remember that according to the BSA definition, OpenOffice.org and Linux are both pirate software, since they do not bring revenues to its member companies.
Pirated copies of Windows have been one of the biggest economic stimuli in the United States (at least up to version XP) in every industry, and especially they helped Microsoft tremendously, as Gates is well aware. While YouTube is currently facing bate-and-switch problems regarding the addition of adverts, a more devious plan would have been to include adverts from the beginning, but with a 'bug' that let users bypass them. Then later fix the bug. You could argue this was actually the case with MS Office, for example, where for years any reg. code (like 0123...) would activate the software. But legally/popularly MS left no precedent/expectation that copying the software from a friend was OK... -Carl