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MS Attempt to Find Pirated Software Fails Miserably
Anonymous Coward writes "Microsoft set up an outdoor booth outside San Francisco City Hall yesterday offering to trade free licensed MS software for pirated versions. The only visitor they got was the guy picketing to have Clinton impeached for treason against 12 galaxies." Here's the SF Chronicle story about the "event." Read it and weep. Or laugh. (You choose.)
Microsoft has filed law suits againts 160 computer sellers in the last year alone!!
What if you are one of these computer sellers and you get sued by MS. Before you even make to court you have two problems:
1) You have legal fees to pay.
2) You no longer get legal copies of Windows at competitive OEM prices.
In other words, MS can sue any company they want out of business , whether or not they are doing something illegal.
Not to pick on renegade187 (his is just the first visible reply to this um, subthread, given my current set of viewing preferences, so I replied here for visibility and clarity)...
/. a useful resource.
Everybody who replies to stuff like this effectively negates the work of the moderators by making large segments of the thread leap into visibility; I'm sure nobody wants to spend moderation points downgrading replies of varying intelligence and humor because the original poster was an idiot. And so we end up with a big string of off-topic score:1 and score:0 (unmoderated reg users and ACs, respectively) posts telling this guy off.
Sure, he deserves it. And I bet it felt good too, especially those of you who came up with clever retorts. But IMHO it's not worth it if the rest of us then have to wade through dozens of posts having nothing to do with the original topic. People like this will generally disappear quietly if we don't rise to the bait, and in the meantime the moderators help make it easier for us all to ignore them and keep
In front of the Microsoft booth?
Think their monopoly has really grown that big yet?
(I start all posts with the subject "hrm...")
Wow. I think the most effective weapons against software piracy are:
a) Lower prices
b) Incentive to purchase (make the customer feel worth it)
and finally,
c) Software coded on punchcards that are 3 feet by 5 feet.
But that should apply for all companies. Maybe if they were to focus more on fighting software piracy on-line. I bet many of the folks present upon the street had little experience with software piracy... in that case, Microsoft should have focused more on the education of the public, instead of trying to acquire pirated software.
Ah well, life goes on in Redmond.
You'll eat it and you'll like it.
Why is it that people have an alarming tendency to leave the caps key on when they're being idiots? Is this some sort of "my member is bigger than yours" mating ritual? Combine that with an alarming tendency to misuse numbers and really, really bad punctuation (we all misspell from time to time, but really...)- and being taken as anything other than a chronicly pissed off six year old who needs a spanking is going to be very, very difficult.
More importantly:
Why do poeple pirate software?
There are, from my experience, three types of "pirates", if you will:
1. Warez D00dz. Enough said. These are the sort of people that use pirated software because they think they're cool. So what if your average flamer has 3dsMax, True Space, Illustrator, Quark, etc. on his hard drive? Odds are it's only to impress his friends and the applications get little to no use. These people have enough trouble typing- their artistic capability is more than likely lacking. I'm sorry, but you could have every program ever and you're still not going to impress me. I'm more impressed by my roommates- one has rewritten LiteStep into a respectable GUI and the other has created the Max Script from Hell and is doing high-profile freelance for a big company. And he hasn't even graduated yet.
2. High-end criminals. The fly-by-nighters who sell the stuff for cheap at trade expos and in the back of catalogues, on ebay, or web sites, etceteras. These people usually have the resources to fabricate the packaging, and are going to charge you a fairly reasonable amount of cash for the goods. What the software should be priced to begin with, IMHO. If companies like Adobe and MS slased prices, then these goons would have to drop theirs, which isn't something they can reasonably do while keeping up a front of "respectability".
3. The "Morally Ambiguous", or Rational Anarchists, if you will. These are the sort of people who have legal copies of the stuff at work and school, and natrually, their home machines are loaded to the gills. They have indirect access to the latest and greatest at no personal cost- do you expect them not to take advantage of it? If you do, leave now: it's a mentality that is difficult to reason with. If programs that were as powerful and useable as Director, After Effects, Photoshop, etceteras, were available in Linux, these types would scarf them up instantly. And no, Gimp can NOT compete with a base install of Photoshop 5.02 in the hands of a capable user. Sorry. Flame me all you like. These people do as they please because they are in an environment where it is condusive to do so. The issue of license holding can always be brushed aside, since someone in the chain of command actually owns one. Just not the Rational Anarchist.
The rational anarchy standpoint is an interesting one, particullalry in the case of apps like Photoshop and Director: the project work gets done, but in a more convenient setting. And the company laready has the license for the stuff.
If you really, REALLY want to stomp out piracy, go the Media100 route. Media100 software requires a board of varying capabilities and costs to be physically insterted into a PCI slot for your software to perform at something approaching peak useability. Oh, yo ucan dupe that CD as much as you want, but there's only one board per license- and good luck fabricating THAT. But then, do really want a bunch of dongles and PCI boards cluttering up your box? Didn't think so.
If it isn't already obvious, I firmly stand for the third category. If Linux ever developes apps that are useable for what I do for a living, then I'll jump on the bandwagon. It's a concept I believe in. But then, I also think Eight Tracks and Bubble Memory are cool ideas too. Linux is to me the way the Mac is to Windows users: it goes, and it does a lot of neat things you can use, but overall, it doesn't have anything you want or need. But that's me. Of course, as is much the case with things like Quake and Star Wars, Linux has its share of Zealots. Followers who really need to get a life. Let them flame me if they like. In my opinion, Slashdot is an open forum for this sort of thing. And in the tradition of freely developed stuff, if the people in charge see a reason to do something off-topic (Hemos losing his living quarters, for example), then as the people in charge, they can. I doubt that the bulk of the detractors out there have any idea what it is that goes on behind the scenes, what makes Slashdot tick. These people are more than likely ignorant louts who have no idea what Perl is or how talented Rob is when it comes to its implementation.
Of course, said detractors more than likely fall into category one.
Bottom line: as long as large amounts of cash are charged for software, there will be piracy. As long as licencing is an issue, there will be the Morally Ambiguous to step around it and get the job done anyway. And as long as there is an "average" intelligence, those on the lower end will make fun of and yell at (in caps, of course) the things they can't understand.
In the case of Microsoft or any other monopolistic
company, the prices they charge are higher than
the free market (efficient) price.
Companies don't generally price goods and services
based on the cost. They price based on the
market. As long as the price they can charge in
the market will cover their unit costs, then
they'll sell product or services.
Piracy doesn't directly increase the PRICE but it
does increase the COST. The response can be a
price increase, exiting the market, etc...
depending on how much the cost increase is.
Putting a dollar value on software piracy is
tricky, though. You can't just count the number
of illegal copies around and multiply that by
the price. You have to take into account the
fact that some number of illegal users wouldn't
use the product at all.
Bolie IV
An executive order had to be signed to mandate this??? You'd think our various government agencies would at least make an attempt at being honest without a law enforcing it.
Assuming they buy from a large OEM distributor. I called Merisel for the price on a boxed copy of MS Windows 98 SE (you know, the one with free phone support that the OEM version doesn't come with). It was over $250 (CAN) ... that's about $175 US. A few bucks? I don't think so. Considering OEM copies specifically state that your only support is through the OEM. I don't want to sell my customers OEM Windows 9x and have to support it ... it's buggy, we all know that. I want MS to support their own software. But then I have to pay the extra because very few customers will.
... make an obvious difference between products with a similar core to maintain so that they can price the higher end product much higher (Think high-end Intel and AMD chips).
... we learned this in highschool Calculus people ... for every dollar you add to the price, your profits go up per copy sold and a certain number of copies won't be sold. You figure out the optimum price not based on how many people will get the product but on optimum profit. If you're the only option, you can price much higher and have this work for you -- MS has lost in the past to software pirates, but in the future it will be to competitors (Linux, BE, etc.). If a 16 year old wants to upgrade to 98, are they going to pay the bucks or pirate it? They'll install Linux in the future ... ie, MS isn't losing much money to individual pirates (home users) as they wouldn't buy the software at any rate (in many cases).
IMHO, the reason software is so expensive is not primarily because of piracy but because the main consumers are businesses who are more than willing to shell out the money for Windows products. That's the reasoning behind Windows 2000 "editions" (home, business, enterprise)
Individuals get screwed, price-wise, because they aren't the real target market on a curve of price-profit ratios
Who MS really IS losing money to are large piracy houses who manufacture fake MS Windows boxes, etc. and get them on the shelves. These should be busted by FBI, etc. though, not MS themselves.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
haha, if I'd been there I'd have taken a debian gold cd (or something similar) and showed em it. And if they'd said it was legal I'd have acted stupid (I have a natural advantage, heh), and if they said it was illegal I'd have pulled out a printed copy of the GPL and confused em with it.
Wonder if they'd give me a copy of win9x in exchange, hardly a fair trade.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
You hit the bottomline. MS doesn't really care about home users installing two copies of win 98 when they only bought one. They do care about companies creating thousands of win 98 cds and selling them as the real stuff. The latter is bad for MS but it may also cause trouble for the people who buy the illegal cds (without knowing it).
:)) doesn't make me feel guilty about installing their software without paying for it.
Anyhow, MS keeps the door wide open for piracy and only has trivial obstructions for copying the cd. The only copy protection is the serial number you have to type in when you install the product. If MS were serious about doing something about the smaller software pirates, they could easily add some copy protecting stuff on the cd (which would make it hard for the average user to make a copy). But they don't, they choose to keep the door wideopen to piracy. This causes me to believe that they actually benefit from home users cheating a little with their software. They even allow those users to download updates!
All this (in theory
Jilles
Seriousyl, thought, you are looking way way way too far into this... People may actually have good tings to say about microsoft. They're not 100% evil, you know. Oops. Now i said something that's not pro microsoft, and therefore should be moderated down, right?
Just because this is slashdot, that doesn't mean it has to been this festering pool of anti-microsoft sentiment... I really enjoy the discussions around here where people intellegently debate the pro's and con's of each angle of everything.
I think you need to get over this paranoia of Microsoft trying to invade and influence your life. Next thing you know, you're going to start thinking that all the computers you buy funnell money back to microsoft due to components that you don't need, or that maybe that pro microsoft letter to the local newspaper originated in their PR department, and that they're buying opinions of major corporate consulting firms... Oh wait. Drat!
I think though, honestly, that slashdot is useful for MSFT to research what people dislike about them, but i doubt they would expend the energy to try to change the opinions found here, because most seem to be way out in right fiend and not even remotely changeable.
my two cents
I found this old tidbit again, out of sheer luck looking for something else.. (today).. and forgot about it. Its a bit interesting, pretty old. Not sure what else to say.. just that anyone bothering to read the forum....
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
But, ten years ago, would you have felt the need to do it?
The problem is that while computers make things easy to do, once things become easier to do they also become required. The things that are added tend to be nonessentials -- for example, consider all these fancy, pretty internal documents done in word and friends. 10 years ago, they would have mostly been done on a typewriter without the benefit of fancy formatting and that would have been fine.
Even worse, docments are created that would not have been before because it's now easy. Which just proves that most work is busy work.
-- Slashdot sucks.
I've seen a bunch of insightful comments on how piracy is costing the one group or another so much money.
Think about that statement for a little bit.
How much money would have been spent on legit software? Now, ask yourself where did that money go instead?
Software has an extremely low cost of production, especially when compared to durable goods.
Yes, I know, there's tech support and all that, but.. think about how much money Microsoft has spent on developing NT in the past four years. My guess would put not greater then 100 to 250 million dollars. How much money has Microsoft made off of NT? Why does it cost $25 dollars a person to connect to NT server? (do that math on that one. My former company had 3,000 seats, that's $75,000 dollars of income that costs Microsoft how much to produce? Hell, you don't even get a piece of paper with a CAL anymore.)
If my company hadn't spent the money on those seats, where would have it gone? To pay someone's salary maybe? Building a better business? I don't know, and I don't care. My point is that the money hasn't been lost to the economy in general, it has just been lost to Microsoft.
I'd bet my ass that for every dollar Microsoft loses to piracy, three more dollars are generated in other sectors of the economy.
I don't mind paying for tools, but when the price of those tools far outweigh the benefits, then those tools become a liability.
This is why free software is a good thing.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
Piracy serves an important purpose. Say John Q. Businessman needs to create MS Office documents, since all his clients use Office (and MS claims there is no such thing as network effects!). He has to go buy a win32 environment to run Office (ignoring macs for now). Since MS is the only place to get an OS to run Win32 apps, he must buy their software.
Since he doesn't have a choice, MS can charge whatever they want. But wait, they don't! There is some competitive force keeping prices down (not very well, but its there). At some point, Windows would just cost too much, and the fines for piracy, times the risk that they'll get caught is less than the price of Windows. The smart businessman then pirates windows.
Microsoft does have competition. Its the software pirates. Obviously this doesn't make piracy good; I'd prefer that said businessman used free software, but it is certainly something to think about.
Microsoft got away with producing inferior software because they managed to get it in front of lots of people, which created a critical mass effect.
The definition of quality is a tricky thing. On one level - ease of use and versatility - Microsoft Windows software, aka Word and Excel, were better than what proceeded it. On another level - reliability - Windows software was far worse than what came before.
Consumers noticed the first part, ignored the second. That's why we're in the pickle we are today.
So I would say my point is still valid - if a company more interested in quality had spearheaded the GUI revolution, we'd have better and more productive computers.
D
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The rest of it is meaningless. Since an economy is a closed system, you say it may be beneficial to pirate software since your money stays in your wallet for other uses. So by that rationale, even if you stole stuff it is fine, since the $ stay in your wallet and are used productively elsewhere.
There's a very big difference between "piracy" of intellectual goods, and stealing physical goods... Comparing the two is apples and oranges, the route you took to "prove" me wrong. There is a fixed cost associated with producing a physical good. If I go steal a candy bar in a store and eat it, it absolutely costs the manufacturer (well, really the store owner probably, but still) whatever amount of money it took to create the candy bar in the first place. For intellectual property, like software or music, if I go and "pirate" a copy of MS office, it costs microsoft *absolutely nothing*. There's a theoretical profit loss, but there's no corresponding fixed cost that's being lost because the original investment money to create MS office is a sunk cost - it has no bearing on the profit/loss of each sale. Hence my points about software piracy not being quite the scourage on society that the software companies make it out to be.
Hijacking a truck with 5000 msoffice boxes in it, then reselling them at a computer swap sale is bad. Period. You're stealing a physical box + cd that cost microsoft $3.50 to make. This is called stealing. Putting up MSOffice on an FTP warez site is not the same thing at all, even if you charged people five bucks to access the site. Every downloaded copy is not a loss to microsoft... it's a *potential* loss, yes, but the whole point of my argument was that the potential is much smaller than the software companies would have you believe.
It's stuff like this that results in slashdotters being called crackpots. Here, let's think about the positive aspects of sneaking in and watching movies for free, or shoplifting magazines - if you like the product, it creates awareness of it and makes you likely to buy more of it! Woo hoo!
First, if you want to be insulting, don't post as an AC. Second, we're back to apples and oranges. There is an absolute loss if you steal a magazine, because you're walking away with something physical. If you sneak into a movie, presuming you're not taking up a paying customer's seat, you cost the theatre *absolutely nothing*. Is there a potential benefit to you being there? Absolutely. Does that benefit outweight the theoretical cost of you not paying? Maybe... And that's my point. Maybe. Not absolutely not.
Why is this story posted on slashdot? Is it simply to provide people with a forum to make snide remarks about Microsoft? Aren't there enough legitimate opportunities to do that already?
In case you don't realize this guys, 20000 geeks' livelihoods depend directly upon Microsoft. Twenty thousand employees and their families are directly influenced by software piracy. Pirated copies of software cost Microsoft money, and do you think they'll be passing that cost along to BillG? Forget it. It comes straight out of the base employees' salaries.
Hey, I know you guys don't like patents. I know you don't like copyrighted software. I know you don't like Microsoft. I get what you're saying. What some of you don't seem to get, though, is that as long as our industry operates on those principles, ordinary peoples' lives can be harmed by flippant acts of "rebellion" such as piracy.
If you want to change software, advocacy is the best way. Look how much has already been accomplished by those means. Laughing about guerilla tactics like cracking and piracy only reinforce the negative stereotypes of this movement.
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Maybe they just changed productivity. I can't hand a 200,000 record table to a person or even a group of people and have them hand pick out duplicates and expect to see the result within the week. This takes a matter of hours with a medium power (today) desktop computer. Maybe it just doesn't apply to certain industries, but, like I said in my other post, my job would have been impossible to do in a company our size 10 years ago (at least at the volume I do now). Maybe computers don't increase productivity for people who don't USE them (salesmen, secretaries) but for me, and the artists (who have G3s) at work, a faster computer can double the amount of work we can do, because the work itself is processor intensive.
+&x
Of course they will never admit this through official channels. It's the classic double standard.
I would love this to happen, but: Photoshop is primarily a photo editing app (hence the name). Who uses that? Photographers and press. What do they use? Macs! Until Linux can duplicate the easy of use and installation of the Mac OS, the Gimp will be used mainly for content creation (like Tux :-). Nothing wrong with that, but that isn't Photoshops main market.
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
I wonder if we'd be in more of an economic boom if a company that created working software had succeeded in setting standards instead of MS.
Think of all the productivity lost through crashed programs and frequent MS software reboots - that must amount to billions of dollars worldwide.
D
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If you need to use their operating system, you certainly should buy a license for it. If you have an overwhelming need not to support them, don't use their products.
Don't make it illegal. Here's a crazy idea to become legal. Use Free Software. This could be a MAJOR advocacy point. What? You want to be a law abiding citizen? Here use this. Yep, give it to as many friends as you want. Hell, burn it to a CD, make a pretty box, get announced on /., and go public, everybodies doin' it.
Software's value is zero (Demand/Supply). The sooner the law realizes that the better. The same with IP. We need some serious restructuring of these laws to allow for an infinite product. Capitalism and an infinitely renewable procucts make for a dangerous mix.
+&x
Hey, next time Microsoft goes to hang out in front of a court house why doesn't everyone show up with their Windows 98/95 CD's that aren't being used because they aren't running it and demand their money back. Hell, if they're at the court house complaining about the money being stolen from them why not go to complain about the money they're taking?
Truthfully, I think there are some genuinely pro-Microsoft folks lurking here. However, I suspect this specific article got moderated up high because many Slashdotters depend to some degree on the packaged software industry for their livelihood. This is a hot-button issue for anyone who sells software - perhaps even more so for small companies then MS.
D
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I've been hearing TONS (and the rock means TONS) of commercials making blanket statements that copying ANY and ALL software is piracy. I usually just laugh at them. But after the first month I started thinking (scary though in itself). Is it possible that companies like Microsoft are pushing the piracy issue to confuse people on the opensource issue? I mean if you get average joe user who is interested linux/bsd. Joe linuxuser friend gives him a copy and joe user wonders about piracy. Just some random thoughts.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
When I hear that Microsoft is *Shipping* a Linux port of Office, I'm gonna party. Everyone in the office will look at me funny, but, heh, what else is gnu.
+&x
The first point is valid.
The rest of it is meaningless. Since an economy is a closed system, you say it may be beneficial to pirate software since your money stays in your wallet for other uses. So by that rationale, even if you stole stuff it is fine, since the $ stay in your wallet and are used productively elsewhere.
*positive* aspects of piracy. Software piracy increases awareness of the software.
It's stuff like this that results in slashdotters being called crackpots. Here, let's think about the positive aspects of sneaking in and watching movies for free, or shoplifting magazines - if you like the product, it creates awareness of it and makes you likely to buy more of it! Woo hoo!
exceeds the value the customer is forced to fork over.
Nobody is forcing you. This so called "forking over" is what is known as a purchase. In a capitalistic society, it involves exchange of money for goods and services, for a price set by the seller, at conditions also set by the seller. The reason the seller sets the price and conditions is because he OWNS the product. If you don't like it, you don't buy it. That's how it works.
No matter how crappy the product is, it doesn't justify pirating it. You could as well justify pirating anything that way - movies, books, CDs, medicines. There are countries that manufacture all of the above without the consent of the original producer, simply because they think it's too expensive. You might claim drug companies are charging exorbitant prices, but the reality is that they also spend millions on product development, just like MS does. If you don't like it, don't buy it. But please don't justify churning out fake copies and selling repackaged copies.
I'm not talking about casually handing a CD to friends. Normally, MS and companies crack down on mass piracy, which I can't find any reason to justify, simply because the pirates make money at the expense of the producer, while leaving the customer stranded with a fake product.
And yes, I use linux. And the stunt MS pulled was stupid. but that doesn't mean piracy is a good thing.
So....um...suppose you just made a great new computer technology. You sold it to a lot of people who drew up blueprints and sold it for a lot less. You'd be pissed, n'est pas?
So, that's bad, but software piracy is ok? Well, software piracy is just about the same thing. So what makes it so diffrent?
I think slashdot has a very close minded approach to Microsoft (though very open minded in other ways). We need to realize that Microsoft is not the `evil empire' and dosen't want to take over the world (sorry).
Just remember how upset we are at companies that burn copies of Linux distro's and sell then for $5 on the corner. We don't like them, however, it's just legal piracy, same concept, diffrent licensing agreement.
That's my $(2^4*3+1/7%3*2/100)
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
The Solow paradox says that computers don't seem to add anything to the productivity statistics. That either means computers aren't as useful as we think, or the statistics are wrong. I tend to think it's a little of both, but the result is that MS doesn't do a whole lot for the economy.
I've seen these Solow statistics, and I don't buy 'em. Maybe its just that Moore's law has made what I do possible on desktop machines. Ten years ago it would have taken desktop machines days if not weeks to do what I can do in a single day. Not that I do that much, but it still wouldn't have been possible without the overlal speed increase of computers, and networking, and now, the Internet.
I don't think this report/study takes into account the tremendous amount of work that is now done by robots. Not the big shiny metal ones, the ones that live and work in our machines. Programs and such. My little army does the work of at least 200 people, every day. I recently started an in-house data entry company, on one machine.
Anyway, I think that report is bunk.
+&x
The real watershed for BI was the release of Turbo Pascal 3.?? for $75.00 a pop. The TP 3.x distribution consisted of a shrinkwrapped paperback manual (I still have mine) with a single 360K floppy stuck in the middle. This came at a time when most PC compilers were going for $1,000.00 or so, and required royalty payments if you sold binaries linked against their libs.
I suspect that part of the reason that TPs sales were so high was the "cost of documentation" factor. Many otherwise honest folks, when faced with the decision whether to buy a license for a software package or "borrow" it, assume that they will have to pay at least $40-150 for third-party books if they really want to get any use out of the software. Since one had to spend roughly the same amount of money to get any value from TP no matter how it was acquired, I think a lot of people who would otherwise have copied a friend's diskette, decided to buy the package.
For what it's worth, BI's prices started to rise because PK got into a stupid OOP VaporWar with BG, which took a huge toll on BI. Buying Ashton-Tate and getting sidetracked into other things like an office suite competition didn't help either.
slashdot broke my sig
but I am completely convinced that current copyright law in the US hurts consumers more than it helps producers, and as such is a bad law that ought to be changed for the better.
Agreed, our current laws only exist the limit the supply of the product and therefore create value through scarcity. This is an unnatural situation given the nature of the product. The laws should be changed accordingly. Or at least the people should be educated about an alternative...
+&x
> The Solow paradox says that computers don't
> seem to add anything to the productivity
> statistics.
Hmmm, first nobody was using computers in their business, now everyone is. It's a matter of keeping up with everyone else. Try running a business NOW without any computers. Just bring in the typewriters and keep track of all paperwork in huge filing rooms. Type all reports for clients/investors individually.
I bet your productivity wouldn't be very high.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Or could it mean that the standards are rising? I haven't read the material in question, though it sounds interesting, but I know that a lot of times, when capacity to produce increases, demand for production increases at twice the rate.
Well, they're supposed to take rising standards into account when they determine all of that and weight productivity statistics accordingly, but as you might guess it's pretty impossible to do that right.
But what is it that you don't believe? This is more than just one report by Solow. This is a few dozen reports by lots of people, who still haven't come up with a consistent explanation. The data are gathered from various sources. It may be that computers waste productivity exactly as much as they help, cancelling out the effect. Or maybe they're just not that important (~2% of business capital investments). Or maybe we just need a better measure of productivity, but it stands that "you can see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
Ok, so you've got to earn money to continue paying people to code, I understand that. (reading the above post about the costs of piracy coming out of the base employees' pay...) I figure it this way - If ALL buisness bought legit copies of software, and all people using it for personal use ONLY got free copies, who is to complain? Now I'm not talking ALL software, but things like Windows, Office, and other buisness related software (minus MS Money)... if they were free to home users and the buisnesses HAD to pay, it'd even out fine. Things like Photoshop and Sound Forge and even Accelerated X (gotta throw a Linux app in there or I'd be flamed to hell) are also included in there. Buisness pay, homes users don't... Or maybe a very small price for home users even to cover the packaging and materials (an almost not-for-profit copy, if you will). It'd work fine, though there would have to be another buisness in which employees went around checking buisness for licenses on their software. Other applications like Gizmos and Paint Shop Pro and other non-buisness type software can stay just where it is on the shelf. Theose are more non-buisness type software and can be paid for by the home users if they want it. What I'm saying is, why make the home users pay for something at buisness' prices if they don't use it like a buisness would and they don't make money off the end-products? Granted, Linux is nice and it is great that it is free but if you are looking for quality in applications, you are almost -always- looking at Windows apps. I don't care how much you insist, Gimp does NOT come even CLOSE to Photoshop. And Linux is still nowhere near up to par with it's hardware compatibilty (2 weeks it took me to get 2 NIC's recognized by PnP and then I get an error on startup about the (ISOLATE PRESERVE) line that noone can answer). However you take that, I am -NOT- slamming Linux, hell, I am trying to get my server up on it (proxy/ipmasq/portforwarder to run ftp's on other machines behind it)... I just CAN'T do it. - 8Complex
I think most of us Linux users would LOVE it if MS actually enforced their licenses..
Can you see it? One $500 copy of office for every PC in the office when you only need it on three at once, can't publish benchmarks, have to actually buy 100 user copy of NT server (insted of pressing UP 95 times)..
If forced to go legit, people would flock to Linux in mass numbers.
So next time someone gets wind of them doing this, burn up a bunch of CD's of the redhat ftp distro, set up a table across from the MS folks and give them out, all the while ENCOURAGING people to copy them because it's LEGAL.
Don't have much opportunity for piracy. You can't do that kind of thing on any scale in a business (perhaps with the exception of real fly-by-night places). The risks and consequences are just too great -- you really don't want your company sued out of existance.
As for users, most of them get M$ for free on their computers. So they don't pay, more than in some very abstract sense. And it's not more than a few bucks per machine.
Piracy also seizes the privilege to use software. You're not buying the software itself so much as media, documentation, support and a *license* to use it -- e.g. check the GPL, where it notes that the license is the only thing that grants you the privilege to use any GPL'd package. If you don't agree w/ that license and you use it anyway, you're still stealing.
You can steal intangibles, like space (squatting), as well. And so forth.
There is no basic *right* to use software unless the publisher/author gives you the right to do so, perhaps indirectly (via a transferrable license).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
How do they come up with this number? The only explanation I can see is that they've built a machine to travel to a parallel universe in which piracy never occurs, and discovered that there are 18,000 more jobs in it.
Or for a more mundane explanation: there are three types of lies...
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Anybody know if these are regularly scheduled events? It would be so much fun to show up and setup a booth and pass out some other free licensed software, like nice linux CDs. Now that would be a stunt to pull.
Think about it folks. Counterfeit software may be a ripoff of Microsoft, but it's an even worse ripoff of the consumer. Go through any computer show, and you'll see piles of "Microsoft OEM" software for sale, or retail copies of Office at suspiciously low prices. If you develop an eye for it, you'll realize that as much as 90% of the stuff is counterfeit.
If you want to rip off a copy of Windows from Microsoft, that's your decision; but if you're going to pay for it, then you might as well get the real thing. People who sell a counterfeit copy of Office to an unsuspecting user for $200 or more are pretty slimy.
Offering to replace counterfeit stuff with the real thing is pretty generous on MS's part, and as I said, I have no problems with them chasing down the people who make the stuff. These are not innocent home users making an extra copy of Windows for their buddies, they're professional criminals, they know what they're doing, and they're ripping off consumers.
I agree, MS accells at creating a user interface (though I still think IE's interface sucks:)
But how worthwhile is a good interface for an unworkable product. Thats what I truly appreciate about linux, and is the reason linux is taking absolutly so long in the development of a good GUI. Linux Developers are concerned with getting a product which is rock solid, then we can go back and make it look good. But sad to say, it seems MS works the other way around.
Forget about the treason! I just read over in a Yahoo! chat room that Clinton also ordered the hit on Chewbacca. It seems that since the Empire has been destroyed the Alliance is now going after the Democrats.
Think about it. You lose all rights to hold the company accountable for their faulty and bloated code. You also increase the installation base of the bad software, thereby increasing the market share, thereby eliminating the competition base and further reducing the incentive to provide better software.
Sheesh! If 29 percent of all copies of MS Windows upgrades and MS Office are pirated, no wonder it looks like Microsoft has a monopoly! Does that include all the legal copies that are installed multiple times? What would actually happen if everyone was forced to pay in full? If sales tax is %10 (a high estimate?) then that 244 million turns into almost 2.5 billion dollars not spent in California alone on software! No wonder there is such an incentive to pirate this stuff.I'm afraid that Microsoft is taking the downward spiral out the drain. These numbers just don't make any sense, and it looks like it is only going to get worse. If the average person feels worse about stealing a candy bar, the only operating systems that will survive are ones that are free (that's gratis, not liberty).
As much as I would like to believe in the liberties of open source software, the truth of the matter is that I don't usually open up the hood myself (though it provides peace of mind with that option being open). The primary benefits to the end user are thus reliability and not having to repeatedly shell out for registered license agreements.
I agree with an above comment that one way to slow the high rate of piracy is to reduce the cost to the consumer. Another more frightful way is to fire up the IDs on those PIIIs . . . . =8O
Of course, it won't be the end of the world, will it? There are several free (gratis and liberty) OSes out there. My future as a consultant isn't disappearing anytime soon. In the meantime, though, make your bosses pay for all the MS licenses as required by law, or threaten to turn them in! If nothing else, this should restore some accountability.
Uhh...*you* may not have a sense of humor, but the richest company in the US getting no takers on its offer of licenses for warez is pretty amusing to most people.
In case you don't realize this guys, 20000 geeks' livelihoods depend directly upon Microsoft. Twenty thousand employees and their families are directly influenced by software piracy.
Oh, gee, get out the hankie. Excuse me while I puke.
Did you ever stop to think about how many careers Microsoft *destroyed* with its illegal tactics?
I don't use proprietary software. I don't think people should pirate. But I really don't care what happens to Microsoft, its employees, or the mindless lemmings who have built it into the monstrosity it is.
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Therefore, rather than simple pirating, we must use other methods to bring the evil empire to it's knees. Support emulation projects along the line of WINE, and ports of third party commercial software, so that windows loses it it's lock on extremely easy to use, mildy versatile software, that runs on all those Intel chips that someone bought for some reason. As this particular AC pointed out, M$ cannot survive without it's profit. Let's take that profit away from them, but let's do in the way that's not only legal, but has the additional effect of grinding the notion that not only do we not need the shoddy M$ OS, we don't want it either. Pirating sends the message that we do want it, but not on M$'s terms.
Simply put, I think we should stop spitting in Billy boy's eye, in order to punch that same eye.
Effort can temper a man's body, but only experience can temper his soul.
I read your article on microsoft's failed attempt to crack down on piracy, and was a bit disturbed about your figures... Time and time again, there are figures released about the staggering amounts of jobs/money software/music/whatever piracy costs the state, and they're all nonsense. The vast majority of these "statistics" are released/publicized by software companies themselves. Even worse, none of the statistics truely address the ramifications of software piracy. All they do is go "we think there are roughly X number of pirated copies out there." (which is *always* a wild guess) "each copy of software costs $Y." "Thus, we've lost $X * Y, which is a huge amount of money, and just think about how many jobs that could have funded."
First, the reality is, 90%, if not more, of the people who are "pirating" software wouldn't be using the software in the first place. The gentleman who was listed in your article as giving his copy of chessmaster 3000 out to his friends had every right to do that if each person was using the software consecutively. And how many of those friends would have actually paid $49.95 for their own copy of chessmaster if they didn't have access to it for free? Very, very few. Yet, all of those people are counted as posessing pirated software for the statistics.
Second, even if there is a large theoretical cost from software piracy, why is it an issue? Our economy is a closed system. If all of a sudden all of the supposed pirates went out and bought copies of the software, the money they used to pay for the software had to come from somewhere. The statistics the public sees imply it magically appears, to then be used for the benefit of all concerned. Not true... it comes from private individual's pockets, one way or another. Would there be more benefit if it remained in those pockets? Maybe. Maybe not. It could be positive or negative, but it certainly isn't as clear as we're supposed to believe.
Third, even if all of those pirates went out and bought software, and it wouldn't be more useful in their hands, why would it be beneficial to give it to the software companies? They have zero obligation or interest to use it for anything resembling the public good, and the directors of those companies would and should be fired if they used it for anything but the benefit of their company. Microsoft, the biggest crier of wolf, has over (if I remember correctly) 10 BILLION dollars sitting in banks earning interest. How does this provide jobs? Does an extra 500 million mean an extra 10 thousand jobs? Or does it mean a big bonus for the directors and a 2 cents per share dividend? How, then, is software piracy a *problem* for the public?
Finally, none of the statistics or articles I read deal at all with the *positive* aspects of piracy. Software piracy increases awareness of the software. Period. Going back to the chessmaster 3000 example above, is it likely that the ten other individuals who "pirated" chessmaster 3000 will go out and buy a full version? Not really. However, is it *more* likely than if they had never used it? Depends on the quality of the software, doesn't it? If someone "pirates" a piece of software, and then finds it to be the best, most highly-crafted, most stable, etc. etc., piece of software they've ever used, odds are they'll go out and buy a copy of the software, for the documentation, or for the next upgrade, or even out of a sense of thanks for the great value they got. Who will software piracy absolutely not benefit? Companys who make critical (people have to have it), but crappy (people have a low, if not negative perception of it's value) software. Ring a bell? Microsoft's operating system, perhaps? And surprise, microsoft is one of the biggest fighters of software piracy.
Software piracy is not an issue if the software's percieved value matches or exceeds the value the customer is forced to fork over. The negative aspects of software piracy are overinflated, and the fight is entirely one-sided. It really makes you wonder what the "cost" of all that copy-protecting and lawsuits is...
Depends on the internal policies of the company. If they enforce a no piracy policy and back it up with real action the company is off the hook and the employee gets screwed. OTOH if they have no policy and management seems to encourage piracy by not allowing an adaquate budget the the company has the problems.
From the article:
She said a similar event in San Diego drew about 40 computer sellers who wanted to see if their software was legit, and ``the vast majority was counterfeit.'
Honesty compels me to admit skepticism. But I'll set it aside for long enough to ask the obvious questions:
Where are commputer sellers getting MS software, under circumstances that they wouldn't be sure it was legit? Surely not from MS. From middleman distributors? If so, and if "the vast majority" of what they're selling is counterfeit, and if they're selling it openly enough that 40 computer sellers in one town can get hooked up for a steady supply... then why isn't the FBI all over the racket?
I'm dubious about the claims, but perhaps I merely don't have all the facts to judge them by. (For example, is the FBI making frequent busts that don't make the news?)
Any clarification would be appreciated.
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Of course, there is no way to know for sure, but I believe that had Microsoft not monopolized the industry, there would have been a more money made, and a healthier industry.
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To summarize: Users pay for it, it's not at all abstract, and it's a hell of a lot more than a few bucks per machine.
Educate yourself and then step back into the ring when you have something valid to say
What you say is true, but it's not like what he says is not true. No need to be mean about it. Think: How many normal computer purchasers actually notice the price of Windows? With Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc., I seriously doubt they do. So that leaves someone shopping at a place like yours, where it is specifically itemized on the bill. His point was not that the cost of Windows is not actually substantial or is not passed onto consumers, but that in almost every case they don't notice, at least not to the point where they would buy a pirated copy, even if they had the technical knowledge to install it.