12.03.09
Gemini version available ♊︎Microsoft Contradicts the BSA While the BSA Attacks Users of Proprietary Software
“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”
–Bill Gates (2007)
Summary: Microsoft again argues that counterfeiting is not a real problem and the BSA turns people against their peers/neighbours who use proprietary (non-Free) software
THE crying crocodile called Microsoft is again openly admitting that “Piracy no longer poses a threat to us” [to Microsoft].
Yes, Microsoft admits the obvious, but it uses an old excuse and spin (one that we last saw a month ago):
Microsoft: ‘Piracy no longer poses a threat to us’
[...]
As this article is published, Microsoft has unfortunately not answered to our repeated email requests for a statement on this issue. In the news business that’s called a solid “no comment.”
Here is TechDirt’s take on it and more wonderful news from the BSA, which is cracking down on users of proprietary software and hopefully driving them away to Free software.
Here in the UK, the Business Software Alliance is running its annual paid informant “Nail Your Boss” program, in which they give big cash rewards to people who fink out their employers for running pirate software. This happens every year, but it reminded me of one of the funniest incidents in my life as a copyfighter:
I was guest-lecturing for a week at a master class on issues related to international copyright to grad students at Budapest’s Central European University. The speaker following me was the lawyer who ran the Hungarian division of the Business Software Alliance. He described the many means by which the BSA tried to combat piracy, and then he mentioned this paid informant program.
Microsoft and the BSA are very close [1, 2] and they are both lying about the scale of counterfeiting, not just the “damages” [1, 2, 3]. Hasn’t Microsoft just publicly acknowledged that counterfeiting does not pose a threat to Microsoft? Oops! █
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