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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.'"
BusinessWeek was just wondering, like, if any of its readers or anyone they know
It's totally cool if you don't want to but, like, everyone's doing it and you get to use each license like three times before they stop considering it 'genuine' so BusinessWeek doesn't know what you're afraid of. You're not afraid are you? You're not going to wuss out on BusinessWeek like that dweeb BusinessEthics, are you?
This is so stupid, Windows would rather have me using this than something else or telling everyone not to use Windows at all
Didn't think so.
Fine, whatever, BusinessWeek doesn't have to beg, BusinessWeek has magazine friends in high magazine places. BusinessWeek is just going to go talk to MacWorld or maybe even LinuxMagazine (as a last resort). BusinessWeek is going to tell National Lampoon's Magazine about you, you'll be on his next cover. Oh, and don't expect to get any from Playboy either because BusinessWeek is stopping by his slot right now.
What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.
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
The headline suggests Business Week could be advocating piracy of Microsoft software. This could suggest some bizarre alignment of the stars such that Business Week is Microsoft-averse, but it's clear the opposite is true.
Basically Business Week lays the groundwork as a recommendation to Microsoft to extend and maintain their monopoly, hardly an adversarial position.
I wonder that Microsoft needs this prodding. I suspect they wink and nod as much as they have to to maintain their reach into all markets however they need to do just that. This while screaming publicly about how ripped off they are in countries like China.
From the article, signs point to the very fact Microsoft alreay knows the strategy:
Microsoft is eating their cake and having it too (the correct form, btw).
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"?
MS has been going after the large suppliers in China. They have. If they do not, then China and India get it for free, and then the western world will wonder why they are paying an arm/leg for crap software.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This isn't news. MS has already (unofficially) said they'd rather India and China used their software illegally than use the competition.
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http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
All my life I have heard... "Yeah... but Windows is free."
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
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
What I would like to see MS do is come up with fullproof piracy protection.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.
the question is not whether or not microsoft should or should not fight piracy in india and china, the question is whether or not microsoft (and business week) understands that microsoft can't do ANYTHING substantial about piracy in india and china
it's not like microsoft has a gun in it's hand and the question is when microsoft should shoot. microsoft simply has nothing in it's hand at all
and it's just desserts: in the 1800s, american publishers openly flaunted european copyrights. now it's the usa's turn to be on the receiving end of a growing power ignoring the "rights" of an established power base
but don't worry about it microsoft, in 200 years, chinaslashdot.org will carry a story about when china should release the nanobots to punish bangladeshi genome pirates stealing chinese biotech copyrights... and bangladeshi and enlightened chinese observers pointing out that the nanobots would have no effect on stopping the illegal conception of pirated organisms
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
BusinessWeek seems to be encouraging Microsoft to aid and abet a criminal enterprise (piracy).
At the very least this is encouraging Microsoft to behave in a manner that would affect the RICO judgement against them. What would BusinessWeeks liability be?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Basically Business Week lays the groundwork as a recommendation to Microsoft to extend and maintain their monopoly..
When we consider what an abusive monopoly that has been, we have to wonder why Business Week would advocate it. What is a news magazine doing advocating any single business, much less one that has destroyed so many others?
It's doubtful people actually making decisions read Businessweek so it's purpose is not to inform. Most people who really know what's going on in the predatory companies that fill BusinesWeek's glossy pages do not talk to reporters. They have PR drones spin some kind of story. The target audience is gullible young MBA types and others thinking about how to build a retirement fund. For the MBA types it's like porn, where their hero's are portrayed in everything but a centerfold. Those who's earnings are invested in big dumb savings plans can take false solice as big dumb companies like M$ are claimed to be solid, eternal and not in anyway like that other Worldcom or Enron stuff that cost them so much.
Real news and enlightenment come from considering simple facts. M$ can put off their "anti-piracy" efforts, but it might as well be forever. M$ is no more going to be able to exploit the world with a software monopoly than they are ever going to understand why. There is no way M$ will be able to purchase the kind of complicity it would take to re-create their monopoly world wide. The US, for all it's talk about business freedom, was far easier to purchase than India and China will be. Those governments have their own self interest to consider and arguments about the well being of a US company won't apply there.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ha-ha! I found some unprotected disk images on the web and installed it on every one of my machines at home. It didn't cost me a dime. Hacked my way around the registration and got it running.
Those looo-hsers at the Kubuntu corporation don't even know I have it!
I'm l33t! I r3w1!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.
..it pays to R past the end of TFA sometimes:
Henry Chesbrough is Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is the author of Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape (Harvard Business School Press, 2006). He is an authority on open innovation, open business models, and more open approaches to intellectual property management.
'twas a masterful troll Mr. Chesbrough. Jonathan Swift would be proud.
Like Bill Gates needs to take business lessons from Businessweek:
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are 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."
CNET News.com, July 2, 1998
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
Actually, they do
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.
I wonder what does BusinessWeek gain by being pro-Microsoft. Are they owned by the software giant? Is their growth somehow tied to that of proprietary software? Do they think their licenses will be terminated if they show disrespect for MS? The real question BusinessWeek should address is not how to make Microsoft more implanted in the developing nations but why they think that situation would be a good thing.
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html?tag=l h
That it's "theft". It's really just "unauthorized - and unpaid - marketing and distribution."
And many business people understand that. If they can use it to their advantage, they do, without any of the moral "hand wringing" that others do.
There was a clothing company who discovered that a Hong Kong or Taiwan outfit was counterfeiting their brand. Instead of bringing legal action, they went to the company and bought it out, subsequently releasing the same "counterfeit" product as their "bargain brand."
It's only people who don't have control over their own product - like artists under contract to music companies - or companies who don't know how to take advantage of or compete with so-called "piracy" who moan and groan about it.
The solution to every problem of this sort is: how can I take advantage of it?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Question for a lawyer: Does Microsoft's deliberate allowance of piracy create a case of estoppel?
Estoppel by silence: "A type of estoppel that prevents a person from asserting something when she had both the duty and the opportunity to speak up earlier..."
Since Microsoft allows piracy, can the company lose its copyright?
Microsoft definitely encourages piracy, in my opinion. For years, local computer stores carried to office suite alternatives: Legal Microsoft Office, and pirated Microsoft Office for $50. Word Perfect and Lotus could not compete. I'm not sure what local computer stores are doing now.
I could give other examples.
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
For me, the price of a new MS Windows OS would be less than a day's wages.
I wonder what is the price in man-hours for the median-income American? and what is the price of the same in China for a median-income Chinese worker? Is there a correlation between these figures and the likelihood that a user will pirate the software rather than purchase it from a legitimate source?