p2pnet.net news:- Does this seem a tad familiar to you?

"At the Morgan Stanley Technology conference last week in San Francisco, Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes commented on the benefits of software counterfeiting," says Ars Technica, going on to quote him as saying, "If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else. We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software."

It’s an interesting statement given Billionaire Bill’s preoccupation with piracy as he and his constantly police the Net for buccaneers.

But it’s nothing new. In fact, it could be said to be a continuation of a long-established Microsoft party line.

In 1998, "Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software," quoth Gates, going on, "Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.

"They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Meanwhile, as Digital Copyright Canada’s Russell McOrmond notes, "What Microsoft does not want to ever happen is that people switch to competing software, especially legal royalty-free FLOSS software such as Linux, OpenOffice.org or Mozilla.org.

"This can be seen with the so-called ‘piracy statistics’ from Microsoft controlled BSA/CAAST which don’t adequately differentiate between those not paying for BSA member software and those who have switched to royalty-free alternatives."

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Ars Technica – Microsoft executive: Pirating software? Choose Microsoft!, March 12, 2007
long-established – Bill Gates praises Russia, November 8, 2006
Digital Copyright Canada – Microsoft’s Jeff Raikes says : If you must pirate, use counterfeit Windows, March 12, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 9:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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