p2pnet.net News:- Not too far back monopoly baron Sir (honourary) William Gates threatened Denmark with dire consequences if the country opposed the European Computer Implemented Inventions Directive.

So it’s no surprise to find Gates in a face-to-face with a head of government - Vietnamese prime minister Phan Van Khai.

The subject? Microsoft’s bottom line.

The Vietnamese pm, “pledged to combat software piracy during talks with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Monday as he became the most senior official of the communist state to visit the United States since the Vietnam War ended 30 years ago,” says CNET News, going on:

“Khai signed two agreements committing Vietnam to work with Microsoft in curbing theft of intellectual-property rights and removing licensing barriers for used computers donated to schools, said Microsoft spokeswoman Tami Begasse.

“The Business Software Alliance, a Washington-based lobby group, estimates that 92 percent of the software used in Vietnam in 2004 was pirated, the highest rate in the world.”

Microsoft is, needless to say, one of the BSA’s leading lights.

Other members include: Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Borland, Internet Security Systems, Macromedia, NC Software/Mastercam, Network Associates, SolidWorks, Sybase, Symantec, UGS PLM Solutions, VERITAS Software. ‘Policy’ members are Cisco Systems, Entrust, HP, IBM, Intel, Intuit, and RSA Security.

The BSA recently said losses attributable to counterfeits had risen from $29 billion to $33 billion.

However, Britain’s The Economist wasn’t entirely convinced of the veracity of the BSA’s numbers.

"The association’s figures rely on sample data that may not be representative, assumptions about the average amount of software on PCs and, for some countries, guesses rather than hard data," it said upsetting, in the process, BSA spokeswoman Beth Scott.

The Economist item was slugged BSA or just BS?, a headline Scott found “particularly offensive”.

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

See:-
dire consequences - Gates blackmailed Danish gv’ment, p2pnet, February 15, 2005
CNET News - Gates, Vietnamese prime minister talk piracy, June 21, 2005
veracity - The Economist angers BSA, p2pnet, June 15, 2005

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