[plug] Piracy!

[Leon Brooks]

>From http://www.howtotell.com/ww/why.asp:

> Software piracy harms everyone, including you.
> Why should you care?

> * Pirated software may contain harmful viruses
>     Unauthorized software can often contain viruses
>     with the potential to damage both individual
>     computers or entire networks. Viruses can and do
>     cause data loss, which would be devastating to
>     most companies. Why risk it?

> * Ineligibility for technical support or product upgrades
>     When using unlicensed software, you are not eligible for
>     technical support from the software publisher. If you
>     have a technical issue in need of resolution, often
>     times a work-stopping issue, you are out of luck. In
>     addition, product upgrades-less expensive upgrades of
>     existing products-are not available to you.

> * High legal costs and fines
>     Abuse of software licenses can result in financial
>     penalties, legal costs, and damaged reputation.
>     Additionally, executives of the company can be held
>     individually liable, both criminally and civilly,
>     for any copyright infringement that occurs within
>     the organization.

> * Software compatibility issues
>     Unlicensed software may cause incompatibility between
>     programs that would normally function together
>     seamlessly. Such compatibility issues lead to
>     inefficiency and ineffectiveness of employees.

> * Negative impact on local and national economies
>     By spending money on counterfeit software, which is
>     often manufactured by organized criminals, customers
>     are also inadvertently stifling the growth potential
>     of the economy and contributing to the loss of tax
>     revenue and employment.

> Based on Business Software Alliance estimates, the current loss of
> jobs, wages, and critical investments in software and technology
> innovation worldwide due to piracy so far this year is estimated at:

...and there it finishes, there being no number at all in the HTML source for 
the page - implying that Microsoft's website is using pirated software, cf 
their own statement that ``Unlicensed software may cause incompatibility 
between programs that would normally function together seamlessly.''

Now, as I was kicking back and considering that list, a couple of things 
about it dawned on me. One was that it is a pretty good laundry-list of 
things that fully-paid-up Microsoft software does.

Another was the weasel words used here. Start by knowing that the BSA is in 
essence and function an enforcement arm of Microsoft, so the BSA quotes and 
estimates aren't even paid-for ``independent'' statistical lies, they're just 
plain ordinary statistical lies. Now let's do a quick point-by-point:

* Viruses

Some Mac people bother with antivirus software, some don't. Practically 
nobody else except users of Microsoft software, generally genuine, paid-for 
Microsoft software, needs them. QED.

* Tech Support

This could be important, given that Microsoft products require 5-10 times as 
many support staff as either Mac or Unix, but note that they don't use the 
word ``free'' anywhere. It's pretty much a gimmee that you can get cheaper 
and more effective support from a third-party provider, regardless of the 
legal status of your software.

* Legal Costs and Fines

Given that the Microsoft's left hand, the BSA, is the one pushing for said 
costs and fines to be applied, this is kind of hypocritical. You don't hear 
about Richard Stallman leading licence audit teams or doing nosey 
``walkthroughs'' of people's sites. When a GPL violation is uncovered, 
fgenerally by accident, the FSF generally negotiates a simple fix instead of 
lawyering the ``offenders'' into the ground.

* Compatibility

The implication here is that since Microsoft no longer support Windows 95, 
and compatibility was a fairly hazy issue even when they did, there is no 
loss to ``pirating'' it. I know of several occasions when people paid for 
software, either Microsoft software or 3rd-party to run on Microsoft systems, 
and the software proved incompatible, so they ``pirated'' a compatible 
version (either of the software or of a compatible supporting component) and 
used that instead. Who is in the right there?

* Economic impact

By centralising development in Redmond and a few other places, and turning 
all of the local staff into salespeople and menu-readers, Microsoft is 
suppressing the local economy in both the short (less money because less 
expertise) and long (supporting dolts not geniuses and suppressing 
competition) terms.

* Chutzpah

Think about Stac, DR-DOS, SpyGlass and the several score of corporate bodies 
scattered along Microsoft's path and tell me, who is the biggest pirate of 
them all?

So... I'm looking for ideas for spoof sites, like:

    http://$HOST/piracy/howtotell   highlighting M$ as a pirate
    http://$HOST/privacy/howtotell
    http://$HOST/monopoly/howtotell

So... speak up! (-:

Cheers; Leon
--
Pirate king: Believe me you missed nothing. Tell him men, have you
             missed anything these twenty years at sea?
Pirates: SEX!
(http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Makeup/5240/pmscript.html)