Bill Gates is a shrewd businessman and his "drug dealer" mentality (seen in his current investments too, not just shown in the quote above where he referenced China) is becoming a lot more apparent in this current decade. Earlier this year we showed that Microsoft software was no longer gratis in China (Microsoft usually turned a blind eye before that), where Microsoft admittedly benefits from counterfeiting and unlicensed copies of Windows.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Thursday it settled a copyright infringement case with China's Citic Kington Securities Co., marking another small victory for the software giant against software piracy in China.
Microsoft said in April it won a decision from a court in Shanghai against a Chinese insurance company for intellectual property infringement. Last year, four people were sentenced to prison terms for distributing pirated Microsoft products.
Microsoft Corp.'s Donal Keating uses a custom-built microscope to take 72 high-resolution images of a counterfeit software disc at a Dublin, Ireland, crime lab.
[...]
In 2007, the company helped Chinese authorities break up a syndicate that had generated $2 billion in counterfeit Microsoft products. In December the company helped Indian police raid one of that country's largest resellers of Microsoft products, which was pairing legitimate goods with knockoffs to boost profits.
“Narcotics, mafia, piracy, Microsoft Windows... just lump them all together to scare the readers.”In this same article, notice how Bass is associating unlicensed copies not just with piracy but also actual crime (pay attention to sentences like "The probing is part of a campaign by the world's largest softwaremaker to vanquish counterfeiters. Microsoft employs 75 investigators, lawyers and analysts - many with experience in narcotics and Mafia cases - in nine labs around the world.")
Narcotics, mafia, piracy, Microsoft Windows... just lump them all together to scare the readers. After all, at Microsoft it's all about illusions. ⬆
"Stewart Alsop, industry gadfly, presented Gates with the "Golden Vaporware" award, saying, "The delay of Windows was all part of a secret plan to have Bill turn thirty before it shipped."
--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul