One Response to Scapegoats for Piracy speak out.

  1. mattsenate says:
    October 18, 2010 at 9:54 pm

    Speaking of Russia, here’s a follow-up to an NYTimes story last month that displayed Microsoft’s anti-piracy licenses as tools for governmental suppression. It seems Microsoft is now making a bold Public Relations move by offering up free licenses to “more than 500,000 advocacy groups, independent media outlets and other nonprofit organizations in 12 countries with tightly controlled governments, including Russia and China.”

    For more context, you might be surprised to hear that Microsoft, before its most recent philanthropy, used tolerating piracy as a mechanism for dominating the market in China, as this 2007 CNN article explains:

    Today Gates openly concedes that tolerating piracy turned out to be Microsoft’s best long-term strategy. That’s why Windows is used on an estimated 90% of China’s 120 million PCs. “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not,” Gates says. “Are you kidding? You can get the real thing, and you get the same price.” Indeed, in China’s back alleys, Linux often costs more than Windows because it requires more disks. And Microsoft’s own prices have dropped so low it now sells a $3 package of Windows and Office to students.

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