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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.)
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)
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)
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
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"
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.
Forget it. It comes straight out of the base employees' salaries.
Actually, it's being passed on to the consumer in the form of overpriced software. I don't know anyone who's going to work for less than the going rate because the company is having some of its products stolen.
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.
This is very much the case with smaller software companies who can't afford to have their software stolen, but I don't see Microsoft paying their engineers $8/hr because the pirates are running them out of business.
I'm not advocating that it's okay to steal software from anywhere, but their anti-piracy campaign is more rooted in greed rather than trying to keep their business out of the red.
Don't have much opportunity for piracy. You can't do that kind of thing on any scale in a business (perhaps with the exception of real fly-by-night places). The risks and consequences are just too great -- you really don't want your company sued out of existance.
As for users, most of them get M$ 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.
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.
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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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...
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