Slashdot Mirror


Companies Coming Around To Piracy's Upside?

traycerb writes "The Economist has an article detailing how numerous companies are finding piracy's silver lining: 'Statistics about the traffic on file-sharing networks can be useful. They can reveal, for example, the countries where a new singer is most popular, even before his album has been released there. Having initially been reluctant to be seen exploiting this information, record companies are now making use of it. This month BigChampagne, the main music-data analyser, is extending its monitoring service to pirated video, too.' The kicker is Microsoft's tacit endorsement of Windows piracy in developing markets, namely China. The big man himself, Bill Gates, says it best in an interview with Fortune last year: 'It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not.'"

4 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Old news for most by Aphoxema · · Score: 5, Funny

    That article reads like a young adult suddenly realizing how the world really works, but still stuck in the idea that everything they learned before must still be true.

    --
    "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
  2. Re:I'd be happy if pirates* would acknowledge... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why is it that you feel people are entitled to luxury?

    GREATEST! COUNTRY! ON! EARTH!
    EVAR !!!

  3. Re:I'd be happy if pirates* would acknowledge... by aproposofwhat · · Score: 2, Funny

    If Tom Cruise is worth that much, how much is a full size actor worth?

    --
    One swallow does not a fellatrix make
  4. Re:I'd be happy if pirates* would acknowledge... by aproposofwhat · · Score: 3, Funny

    When you steal copyrighted material, you are stealing

    Yes, but copying something is quite different from stealing something.

    Stealing something involves infringing the natural right of an individual not to be deprived of their posessions - copying something in violation of copyright law involves infringing an artificial right created by law.

    If you don't understand the difference between a natural right and an artificial right, you have no business using clever words like 'vacuous' and 'insipid', you corprophagous troll :o)

    --
    One swallow does not a fellatrix make