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BusinessWeek Advocates Microsoft Piracy
xzvf writes "In a lengthy editorial, BusinessWeek advocates allowing users in China and India to pirate Microsoft software so that it can obtain the same level of market share there as it has in the US and Europe. From the piece: 'If Microsoft succeeds in discouraging piracy of Windows in China and India, it is far more likely to drive the user of the pirated software into the Linux camp than it is to steer them into the land of paid-up Windows users. Microsoft's IP management strategy in China and India should instead focus on securing the victory of Windows on the desktops of all PC users. That may require deliberately lax enforcement efforts against pirated copies of Windows for the short and medium term. Only after the Linux threat lessens might Microsoft have the luxury of tightening up piracy protections, as it is now doing in the West. Microsoft can afford to be patient.'"
Why is this story not tagged itsatrap?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Isn't this their strategy anyway? That and with working officials to make sure that all government PCs are running Microsoft too.
So is the moral of the story is "Let them pirate your merchandise or they might use the competitions"?
BusinessWeek has built good thesis on a bad assumption. Windows piracy is already rampant in China and India. It's harvesting time for Microsoft.
For some reason that line from Godfather I popped in my head where Michael told Kate:
"The Corleone family will be totally legitimate in five years Kate."
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
That was my first thought. I wonder if pointing out that Microsoft is not vigorously enforcing their license in other markets could be used as a defense against the BSA.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Things that are cheap or free are soon seen as worthless - Like the Motorola RAZR for example. The RAZR used to be a high end status symbol, but now that the price has dropped to near zero (with a 2 year plan) there is no way they could start charging $600 for anything else even remotely like the RAZR. Once a couple generations has gotten used to Windows being free, there is now way that they would start paying money for it.
I have mixed feelings about the logic of differential pricing. Companies are free to charge whatever price they please, but the trouble is that in a global economy where anyone can buy anything from anyone anywhere else, how do we know what is 'fair'? What makes it 'fair' to charge Americans and Canadians more than Chinese and Indians for goods and services? Who decides what is a fair price? Apparently it is 'the market', but if that's the case then why can't I buy Region 6 DVDs from Circuit City for $1? Why is there a stink made by companies and economists who say that free trade is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but then complain when they see products sold on eBay for prices that are genuinely fair given the elimination of transaction barriers in the global economy.
A-Bomb
It's bad enough we have to compete with low wages in other countries but we also have to compete with the fact countries like China and the India largely don't pay for software. I have tens of thousands a year in hardware and software purchases just trying to survive. It's impossible to compete against foreign companies. Already my primary client wants to shop part of the work I've been dealing with to a foreign source because they can save money. The situation will get radically worse before there's any hope of improving. It's competely rediculous that I have to pay many thousands a year just in upgrades while most of Asia pays $5 for most any software you can name on pirate disks. I'm not complaining about software prices I just don't see why they should be allowed to get essentially get for free what I pay a bundle for. My money is going to support their free software since I have to help pay for development costs where as they freeload.
"Rights abandonment" only works for trade marks. Copyright is automatic when a work is created (in countries subscribing to the Berne Convention anyway), and Patents are governed by time-limited issuance. Microsoft can abandon all it wants, but it still has the law behind it whenever it decides to sue someone over copyright/patent/EULA infringements. The only thing that could be argued is that if MS was seen to be obviously targeting ONLY specific people/groups with its suits, it could be in violation of business monopoly restrictions.
What *I* would like to see MS do is come up with fool-proof piracy protection while the FSF et al launch a multi-billion dollar ad campaign for Linux and Open Source the day MS implements it, resulting in a 60% switch in a single weekend.
But it ain't gonna happen.
Give away the core Windows OS for free. Charge for the applications (which only work with Windows.)
Move to subscription based application software and/or charge the larger third party application developers a small fee to make up the loss (SDKs, programming tools, license fees for using SDKs/DirectX, etc..) The Microsoft tax moves from the PC manufacturer to the software developers and users. Either way, the customers pay the cost as normal. More importantly, people will choose free Windows, Microsoft eventually gets a stable OS, and finally focuses more on making quality applications. Applications, not operating systems, make a computer useful, eh?
Instead of a depending on near monopoly status and lawyers, it would be nice to see MS compete by producing quality products for a change.
...to this article, being that it seems virtually devoid of morality?
Mr. Chesbrough isn't even subtle about it either--he openly advocates "selective enforcement" of the law to maintain dominance and smother the competition. He goes on further to explain how as a market goes from creation and growth phases into maturity (ie. they have their users trapped) that MS should then suddenly ramp up enforcement and start collecting payback. This is how drug dealers and the mafia operate, not how legitimate businesses are supposed to operate!
Either this clown is as ethically challenged as an Enron accountant or else he is a masterful troll. I can only hope it is the latter and he is trying to bring "A Modest Proposal" into the information age. I'd be careful if I were him though, because over the years, MS has gradually been moving towards the "Mafia business model" and is very nearly there: They already have the opinion that "if the Chinese are pirating it should at least be our stuff", have "favourite customers" that pay only a small fraction of the US retail price...and they are already making patent "protection money" deals with skittish Linux companies. They need no more encouragement from the likes of Business Week and its editors.
Software publishers have been doing this for years to gain market and mind share. Unfortunately most people are too stupid to realize that even if you pirate MS Windows; the price is still too high.
For the Chinese government and their larger businesses I think their major concerns are not price. They are being "driven to the Linux camp" because they can review the source code and make sure MS isn't facilitating spying on behalf of the US government. This is why efforts like Red Flag Linux were initiated, IMO.
<tinfoil>
Likewise, having access to source and their own distro allows them to add hooks and backdoors to spy on their own citizens.
</tinfoil>
I realize that the above doesn't apply to the average user in China but considering the majority of the market over there right now is government and business I'm sure MS is more concerned with them switching to Linux then the average Chinese citizen...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Are not Windows (tm) and Microsoft (tm) trademarks of Microsoft Corporation? If Microsoft allows others to use their trademarks and doesn't defend them does not Microsoft lose enforceability of these trademarks regardless of locale?
IANAL but...
Codifex Maximus
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
China and India have different IP laws, and different law courts than the US, and anyone operating in the US is held to US law. The law clearly states what end users can do with MS's IP (almost nothing), and MS grants further rights to end users IN THE US through its EULA.
If you read their EULAs for different countries, you will notice that they are different, due to differing laws and legal systems. This is called living on planet Earth, and does not give you the ability to use MS software for free because the rights MS grants you to use their property are too confusing. If you can't understand your rights to use their software, then legally you have NO rights to use their software, other than what is spelled out in Fair Use doctrine (which doesn't cover as much as people think it does). As I said before, the only weakness in MS's tactics is that they could be sued for anticompetitive actions. To do this however, you'd first have to prove that they were indeed promoting piracy of their products or at least being very specific in who they targeted with their lawsuits.
I stopped reading at "Linux threat lessens". BusinessWeek obviously doesn't get it.
The Linux threat is not going to lessen. BusinessWeek seems to think that MS can give the software away, get a monopoly, and then there will be no threat. That strategy has not worked even in the US, where people are rich enough to afford Microsoft software and where there are no political reasons to avoid Microsoft. (If I were in a foreign government, I wouldn't want to count on a US software company, just as some US government folks got skittish when Lenovo took over the ThinkPads.) People are not switching to Linux solely because of price. They are switching because it is in some ways a superior product.
Microsoft's problem is not Linux; Microsoft's problem is that it has an antiquated business model: selling shrink-wrapped commodity software at astronomical prices. Giving the software away will delay the inevitable, but the key word is "inevitable".
Penny - plain text accounting