Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Chinese Will “Get Sort of Addicted, and Then We’ll Somehow Figure Out How to Collect Sometime in the Next Decade” --Bill Gates

Cigarette - tobacco



Summary: Microsoft does more to advertise the fact that its software is no longer gratis in China ("addition" phase expired) and more "piracy" propaganda is unleashed

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 is still suing Chinese companies this year. Their only crime is that they spread Microsoft's software to a wider audience, just as Microsoft desired. Now there is another settlement (meaning that Microsoft gets to take money from another Chinese business) and there was even a press release about it, which is unusual. Microsoft wants to make this publicly known and make a general statement perhaps. From Nasdaq.com:

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.


Mark Lee reports in the US and Chinese sites too cover this. Microsoft gets the buzz it craved [1, 2], it is described in the press as the victim thanks to improper language like "piracy" and it turns out that Microsoft also has people sent to prison for distributing Windows/Office.

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.


We gave an example at the time.

Microsoft's friend Dina Bass (from Bloomberg) has prepared a nice propaganda piece for Microsoft, the poor victim of "piracy" as she calls it.

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.


But wait. Microsoft actually encouraged this some years ago. It was seeding the market, so to speak. How come? Bass does not explore these questions. To conform to the norm is to stick with Microsoft's revisionism, the "official story" about so-called 'pirates'.

“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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024
Links 18/11/2024: Science News and War Escalations in Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/11/2024: Degrowth and OpenBSD Fatigue
Links for the day
Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part VII
By Dr. Andy Farnell
BetaNews is Still 'Shitposting' About Trump and Porn (Two Analysers Say This 'Shitposting' Comes From LLMs)
Probably some SEO garbage, prompted with words like "porn" and "trump" to stitch together other people's words
Market Share of Vista 11 Said to be Going Down in Europe
one plausible explanation is that gs.statcounter.com is actually misreporting the share of Vista 11, claiming that it's higher than it really is
Fourth Estate or Missing Fourth Pillar
"The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media in explicit capacity of reporting the News" -Wikipedia on Fourth Estate
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 17, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, November 17, 2024
LLMs Are Not a Form of Intelligence (They Never Will Be)
Butterflies are smarter than "chatGPT"
Business Software Alliance (BSA), Microsoft, and AstroTurfing Online (Also in the Trump Administration Groomed by BSA and Microsoft)
Has Washington become openWashington? Where the emphasis is openwashing rather than Open(Source)Washington?
Windows at 1%
Quit throwing taxpayers' money at Microsoft, especially when it fails to fulfil basic needs and instead facilitates espionage by foreign and very hostile nations
Links 17/11/2024: Pakistan Broke, Tyson 'Crashes' or Knocks Over Netflix
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/11/2024: Nachtigall Planned, Exodus at Twitter
Links for the day
Links 17/11/2024: China's Diplomacy and Gazprom Setback
Links for the day
Sudan Has Reached a State of Android Domination (93% Market Share, All-Time High According to statCounter)
countries at war buy fewer laptops?
[Meme] Just Do It?
'FSF' Europe (Microsoft) and FSF
Microsoft Front Groups Against the FSF, Home of GPL, GNU, and Free Software
Much of the money (not all of it) comes from the criminals at Redmond
Centralisation is Dooming the Web, RSS is One Workaround (But Not "Planets")
At least Gemini Protocol rejects centralisation
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 16, 2024
IRC logs for Saturday, November 16, 2024
Links 17/11/2024: Wars, Bailouts, and Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/11/2024: Changing Interests and HamsterCMS
Links for the day