Posted on 02/18/2010 6:28:57 AM PST by ShadowAce
Several times I have written about "Software Piracy", and I think a lot of my readers get a little tired of hearing about it, but something happened this week that started me thinking about Software Piracy again.
Microsoft made Software Piracy Prevention a voluntary thing.
Of course Microsoft will probably pitch a different explanation, but what they actually did was post an "update" to Windows 7 that had lots of anti-piracy software in it, and told their customers that it was "voluntary" to install the anti-piracy software.
Now this was probably in response to another time when Microsoft tried to force down the throats, er....ah..."distribute" anti-piracy software for Windows XP, but that time they called it "critical bug fixes" and made a lot of their customers mad because they installed the "bug fixes" and ....hello! The "fixes" did not fix any bugs, and in some cases caused the customer's systems to act in very bad ways. Very, very bad ways! And of course Microsoft's customers then acted in very, very bad ways.
So this time Microsoft decided to call the anti-piracy software what it really was, and to make its installation "voluntary".
Think about that for a moment......why would anyone (and especially a software pirate) voluntarily install software that might cause their system to stop working?
Now you could take the Pollyanna viewpoint that most people have valid, upstanding licenses for their systems, and the anti-piracy software would work just perfectly and your system would continue to work. Or you could take the more realistic approach and say that license management is difficult and costly and that some of your software may not be licensed perfectly (although most of your software is) and only some of your software will stop working. Or you can take "maddog's Approach Of Least Pollyanna" (mOLP) and say "even if I try to have fully licensed software, my boss is going to think I am crazy to install this, and if I do I am a toad."
Or you can take the "Totally maddog" (Tm) approach and laugh at people who even have to think about this issue, because you use Free Software.....but I digress.
Unfortunately it is not a laughing matter. The same company that put out this "voluntary" anti-piracy software is also one of the sponsors the Business Software Alliance. Even though the BSA has the same initials as a youth organization in the United States, they are no set of Boy Scouts. The BSA goes out and hunts down the software pirates of the world and makes them walk the plank. This is so user-friendly organizations such as Microsoft (one of their sponsors) does not have to be seen as the bad guys. Remember, it was only a few years ago that Microsoft pledged to be "gentler and kinder" or something like that. Actually I just looked it up, and it was July 17th, 2000....so they had ten years to get "gentler and kinder"....but I digress again!
On the other hand, a couple of years ago a project to put inexpensive computers out to digitally disadvantaged people was jeopardized by a not so "gentle and kind" delegation that was coming to see the president of a certain large South American country. Those of you who know me can probably guess which country this is.....
The "not so gentle" (in fact from my viewpoint they were rather crude and ugly...but I admit to never having seen them physically) delegation was stressing to the president of this country that putting Free Software (software that included not just the operating system, but an office suite, databases, secure and working web browsers, and many more fully functional programs) on these computers was encouraging software piracy!
The argument made (obviously from people never on a winning college debating team) was that as soon as 75% of the computers were handed out, the end users would remove the Free Software and install proprietary, pirated software stolen from this same vendor. The solution, the vendor claimed, was to install a (almost non-functional) version of their software at a very low cost to the government, which would also (of course) keep the Free Software off the system.
The president of this very large, very honest country did not want to encourage software piracy, but did not know how to respond. Fortunately friends of Free Software contacted me and asked me what I thought of this issue.
"Mr. President", I said, "Software Piracy is everywhere. Even the United States has (at that time) a piracy rate of 34% (now it is 20%)."
At that time the large, South American country's piracy rate was 84% (now it is 58%), so of course there was a concern that people replacing Free Software on the laptops would create software pirates.
But wait! I pointed out to the president that just having the rather dysfunctional version of software offered for the laptops would not stop software pirates from stealing software, since the first thing they would do is go and pirate a full copy of the software and put it on their system, creating close to 100% piracy of that company's (and other companies) software. Free Software, on the other hand stopped 25% of the people from pirating software, by giving them a perfectly suitable alternative.
"Finally", I finished, "if this company wanted to keep people from pirating their software, all they would have to do is turn on their anti-piracy tools full, and many people would stop pirating their software. But they are afraid to do that, since most people would simply switch to Free Software."
The president looked at me and said, "I think I will enjoy their visit."
Which brings us back to this latest "update" from Microsoft to Windows 7. Windows 7 has not been out that long. Microsoft has had lots of time to perfect their anti-piracy software and implement it in the base product. Why didn't they just implement it in Windows 7, and turn it on? Why don't they then legitimately put out more anti-piracy software, legitimately marked as "bug fixes"?
Am I asking rhetorical questions? Is the sun yellow?
So please, everyone, make sure your company's or school's or government's Microsoft piracy prevention software is firmly installed. Turn it up all the way. Test it to make sure it works properly. If it can not detect unlicensed software, put in a bug report. Make it high priority! Help the BSA save the world!
On the other hand, you could just use Free Software and kind of ignore all this.
Oh, and for all you people whose countries celebrate Valentine's Day today, please take your significant other out for a good time. And if you are reading this sometime later than February 14th, or your country celebrates on a different day, take them out for a good time tonight anyway.
Carpe Diem!
Well yes, most copies, in the US at least are legal copies. But look at it from a cost benefit standpoint. Why would I do something that cannot possibly benefit me but will benefit Microsoft, for free? So the legal users have no incentive to install it, maybe a disincentive if you count tone deafness on the part of the authors, and illegal users have a huge disincentive. Why would they even field this?
I got tired of the Windows Genuine Advantage crap -
which was for my own benefit.
No longer. I’m free from MS.
I’m trying to get rid of the damn Office Genuine Advantage failure notification on my work laptop (we’re using VLK, so it’s def. genuine), and the runaround from MS is astounding!
I finally got it turned off, but I’m going to install Ubuntu and run my office automation tools from Wine. They work great on my RHEL5 desktop!
I love Linux.
The easiest way I know of to avoid issues like this is to use software which doesn't require it.
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