Blind Corporate Greed…
I’m looking at a small piece of news from a newspaper from here. It says that Microsoft demands more investments from Asian governments in order to curb piracy and admits that constant effort over a few decades will be needed before any significant progress will be made. It also says that the programs that resulted in the reduction of software piracy in Vietnam and China lately have cost Microsoft billions of dollars per year.
In that case, how about simply dropping them? Won’t you be better off by just letting them be instead of spending billions of dollars in order to stop people from doing something that doesn’t cost you anything? Because, despite what corporations say, that’s the truth about piracy: It doesn’t cause losses! If somehow prevented from using pirated copies anymore, if both their personal income and the quality of the specific piece of software stays about the same, the vast majority of those who resort to piracy now still would not buy the program, they just won’t use it anymore either.
Or, if they insist on spending so much, how about investing in sustainable development of said economies and fair trade programs, so people will end up affording to purchase all the software they use first, and only then worry about those who would still choose not to? Or just invest those funds into improving your programs, so they’ll be worth the price you ask for them in the first place…
