Microsoft sues more resellers in piracy battle

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Nice twist on reality

Mugging, rape and murder cause actual harm to individuals and generally are very personal in their commission. The legal implications for these acts are needed to maintain a tight reign on the masses, lest things like New Orleans transpire.

Making a copy or using the same copy of software on more than one PC is not directly harming an individual. No one is being emotionally degraded, deprived of the right to live nor are they being physically molested or mauled. How many times have you borrowed a magazine from someone? Or taken one from the doctors office, it had a good article you wanted to read later. Are you implying that a person should be prosecuted for that?

How about taking that same magazine and making photocopies of an article or two and passing them to your class mates or friends. How is that any different than loaning your install CD to someone? Your lawnmower, your car? Surely you have borrowed something from someone.

What about a book, you buy it read it then turn around and sell it again (at a loss of course) but you are selling someones content, someone elses labor. How is that any different? The entire basis of software piracy and the perceived damage that it is inflicting is pure speculation and most likely not as bad as it is being made out to be.

Maybe if Microsoft and others would drop the prices (like how many other commodities have fallen in price over the years?) the need or desire for "stealing" or borrowing as most will see it, would be negated.

You can argue that the prices of Microsoft software has not gone up over the years, but it hasn't come down either. If anything now that the initial investment has been recovered (and many times over) the need to sustain such high prices speaks of greed. And it not needed. Especially if you take into account that each "new" OS that comes out of Redmond is in reality nothing more than a re-hash of the old kernel with a new interface.

People are wising up to that. Many are smart enough not to upgrade because what they have works already. The ones that are "pirating" are most likely from very poor nations and probably local businesses. The bottom line is your initial statement is not only more out of touch with reality than you imply mine is, but just down right stupid.

Posted by: Linux Guy 1000   Posted on: 09/19/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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