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MS Wants Laws To Block Products Made By Software Pirates
kaptink writes with this quote from Groklaw:
"Microsoft seems to be trying to get its own personal unfair competition laws passed state by state, so it can sue US companies who get parts from overseas companies who used pirated Microsoft software anywhere in their business. The laws allow Microsoft to block the US company from selling the finished product in the state and compel them to pay damages for what the overseas supplier did. So if a company overseas uses a pirated version of Excel, let's say, keeping track of how many parts it has shipped or whatever, and then sends some parts to General Motors or any large company to incorporate into the finished product, Microsoft can sue not the overseas supplier but General Motors, for unfair competition. So can the state's Attorney General. I kid you not. For piracy that was done by someone else, overseas. The product could be T shirts. It doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's manufactured with contributions from an overseas supplier, like in China, who didn't pay Microsoft for software that it uses somewhere in the business. It's the US company that has to pay damages, not the overseas supplier."
Huh, unfair competition laws? Don't you think it's only fair if companies can't buy from companies using pirated software who sell at lower price because frankly they don't need to pay as much costs as lawful companies?
If something this prevents even more work force and money going out of the country to cheap countries like China and puts US companies to a better position again.
I understand that some of you people want to allow piracy for personal use, but this is business. You're making money off pirated products. If such activity wasn't punished then companies could just set up sister companies or even pure proxy companies in countries like China and ignore all and any copyright. Now that US businesses can't just do that, they might even start hiring US work force again and get the economy better. Microsoft and other companies are right in doing this.
I'm cool with that. Let's add a law that says that if your company steals the source code from a partner's product that as punitive restitution they get a perpetual, non-exclusive right to your entire source control for the product which bundled the stolen goods.
Fair is fair, Microsoft.
...and it's not as insane as it seems. Regulation is usually to protect the small guy while the big guys have the lawyer power to avoid it. By phrasing regulation in terms on unfair competition laws, you end up with big businesses paying to enforce regulation. Which do you prefer:
(i) One big business forcing another business to abide by some law;
(ii) That same big business also ignoring the law.
Perhaps the underlying law is unjust. But then you tackle the underlying law - you don't tackle some principle which makes it harder to enforce a law. Let us have more rule of law and less rule of men, yes?
How are they going to prove that the foreign company used Excel instead of Open Office? Or is the idea to force the entire world have to purchase Microsoft licenses just to do business in America?
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." -Linus Torvalds
Sure they can. Also if Microsoft engineer works on computer which contains a chip produced by Chinese company employing janitor wearing pirated Nike t-shirt. Why restrict chain of responsibility to one or two links?
This is what these giant corporations want.
Big corporations _LOVE_ regulation, because the costs keep smaller, smarter, more innovative competitors out of the market. Big business and big government are not enemies, they're symbiotic organisms.
You really think that copyright law should be on the same level as basic human rights? Human rights should be universal on compassionate grounds. Even animals have compassion to an extent. Copyright law is something we as humans completely made up, and if some country chooses to not see "intellectual property" as US law proclaims it, it should not matter.
which is totally what she said
LOL, those guys at Microsoft are quite the jokers.
So they cover their ass with an exception that says it is okay if their copyrighted material is packaged over seas by a company that pirates software so nobody can sue Microsoft under this law and then they block open source software from the same protection under the law even though the most popular open source software in use is protected by copyright.
Yep, scum bags will be scum bags, never fails.
It's a good thing Microsoft's hardware divisions do not use any parts imported from Asia.
Oh wait....
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
This would make the use of any MS product a huge possible legal liability. Why not minimize the risk and go opensource? Companies that strive to sell complete workflow & service packages or servers might use that argument in the future. Good for Redhat, Oracle, IBM.