Verithax... computers come with operating systems... normally windows. People who are buying Windows are upgrading, or build there own computers.

Lets take a Southeast Asia family who can not afford to save up and spend about 200-400 dollars every so many years.

Chances are, they do not have a computer in the first place, or if they do, it can not support a modern OS like XP, or Vista. So chances are, they are not the ones pirating it.

Of course, the people who run COMPANIES in Southeast Asia, or the middle class families in the Southeast Asia area, are the ones pirating. They can afford it... they choose not to. Your argument on pverty is moot, as the United States, and Canada, are the only countries in the world that think putting a computer in a poor persons house is more important then food in their house.

Again: People who could buy a copy of Windows, and instead pirate it, are being morally objectionable. Although you can very well argue that they're supporting those same developers who write copy protection software, and you can definitely say that no software company has ever been brought down by piracy. People who could not afford a copy of Windows (Which is the bulk of all software piracy in most of the world, quite simply because Microsoft's pricing doesn't accomodate those people) aren't. In fact they're supporting the Microsoft monopoly, which they wouldn't be doing if they had no access to pirated copies. It's not all black and white, people.

It becomes different when you're passing someone else's work as your own. This is not the same thing.

Witchcraft is criminal. You can use any argument you like, but it's criminal. How do I know this? Because it's in the law books, and no ethicist I know says it's okay. Only satanists and witches think it's okay.

Alternatively: IP violation is criminal and, under the right circumstances, wrong. But it's not theft. The difference is, when you steal, you deprive someone of something. That something doesn't need to be substantial (It can be, for example, a software license or a piece of data), but it has to be real. When you 'steal' software, the software company still has that software. You're violated their rights to exclusivity on the distribution of said software, but you haven't stolen anything - They still have the data to sell. It's not the same as walking into a store and shoplifting a boxed WinXP copy. To put it another way: If you invent a Santa machine, and I buy one and use it to make Santa machines for other people for less than you, have I stolen anything, or just violated your patent?


Except, in 50 years they'll be worthless. And also, I don't WANT Microsoft software, but Microsoft has forced me to buy their by using their monopoly to turn their product into the only thing that enables me to use the hardware I own to play the games I also own. Some free-market capitalists think in black and white, and don't realise that not all 'free' markets are wholly free.

Sure it's illegal and wrong, but it's not as bad as theft.


Simple counter-argument: Operating systems have no value. Because we have operating systems being handed out for free, that's the baseline for how much Microsoft's software is worth. The only value they are able to add is that which is assertained by their monopoly - IE, applications and hardware compatibility. That value isn't added by them, so I don't see why I should pay them for other people's work, much less for the effect caused by the very presence of their monopoly, which is in my best interest and in the best interest of everyone, to get rid of. Frankly if I was a console gamer, I wouldn't touch Windows with a ten-foot pole. Their 'product' is charging a lot of money for something which is basically worthless, but has added value thanks to their monopoly, not thanks to their programming. You can't determine value based on labour costs. I can spend 200 man-hours banging at a rock and then try to sell it as a 'banged rock'. It would not, however, make it any more valuable than a regular rock you can get for free. Similarly, if Ican get an operating system for free, people will only pay for an OS that I sell if I add value to it. If the only value I add that makes it better than a free operating system is not really my doing, but rather the economic effect of a monopoly I won because of someone else's dire incompetence 20 years ago, then I'm not adding value at all, and shouldn't be paid for it. If OSes were a real free market, I would be a lot less lenient towards software piracy, because it would be really wrong. But some people have no alternatives besides piracy.


Computers don't need to come with Windows or any OS. Windows is unsupported in older computers because it's bloatware, not because it's 'modern'. And you don't really know anything about the reality of people in third-world countries. The plain fact is, lots of people can afford a computer OR the operating system. Guess which one they'll spend money on. And lots of people COULD save money for a copy of Windows, but that's ridiculous. They don't think you should pay that kind of money for a shitty operating system that comes for nearly nothing bundled with prebuilt computers, and they're right.

Fine, is counterfeitting a better term for it?

It's not a monopoly, there are alternatives (macs and others), making it an oligoply. You can't use a banged rock example because a banged up rock has no value BECAUSE THERE IS NO DEMAND FOR IT and can be found anywhere (unless your a jewler and and your rock is a diamond). An OS such as Windows is not just something you can pick up off the ground for free, the only way to obtain it for free is: via some business deal, winning some contest for a computer, or stealing/pirating/whatever the hell you wish to call it.

100% wrong. Doesn't matter if you'd buy it otherwise or not. Its still stealing.

Would you find it okay to hack lusternia and give your character thousands of credits? You aren't taking anything from anyone, you wouldn't have bought credits anyways, but you're taking something that you didn't earn, thus your character would be permanantly shrubbed. The same thing applies to real world, but punishing for every offense unfortunately isn't practical.

Let me quote something for the DOJ here in the US, which would hold jurisdiction over any international suit filed by Microsoft:


DOJ logo The No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act *Summary of Changes to the Criminal Copyright and Trademark Laws* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Tuesday, December 16, 1997, the President signed into law H.R. 2265, the "No Electronic Theft (NET)" Act. The Act was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress (143 Cong. Rec. S12689 and 143 Cong. Rec. H9883-01). The NET Act strengthens the copyright and trademark laws, providing enhanced protection in the digital age in a careful and balanced manner. The criminal copyright and trademark provisions in titles 17 and 18 of the U.S. Code are amended to: * Permit the Department to prosecute individuals under misdemeanor or felony provisions^(1) <#N_1_> in cases involving large-scale illegal reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works where the infringers act willfully but without a discernible profit motive, bridging the gap in statutory protection discussed in _U.S. v. LaMacchia_, 871 F. Supp. 535 (D. Mass. 1994); * Exempt from criminal prosecution reproduction or distribution that is not done "willfully" or that constitutes small-scale non-commercial copying (copyrighted works with a total retail value of less than $1,000); * Clarify that "willful" infringement must consist of evidence of more than the mere intentional reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works; * Define "financial gain" in the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. 101 et seq.) to include the "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works," to ensure that persons who illegally traffic in copyrighted works by using barter rather than cash are covered by the statute; * Clarify that "reproduction or distribution" includes by electronic as well as tangible means; * Extend the statute of limitations from three to five years, making the criminal copyright statute consistent with most other criminal statutes; * Establish a recidivist provision which raises penalties for second or subsequent felony copyright offenses; * Recognize victims' rights by allowing parties who own rights in the pirated copyrighted works or in trademarks on counterfeit goods to provide a victim impact statement to the sentencing court; and * Enhance the deterrent power of the copyright criminal laws by directing the Sentencing Commission to amend the Sentencing Guideline for copyright and trademark infringement to allow courts to consider the quantity of infringing goods and the retail value of the good infringed upon, rather than the often lower value of the infringing good, when sentencing defendants. Copies of the trademark and copyright provisions as amended by the NET Act are attached. These are 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 506, and 507 and 18 U.S.C. §§ 2319, 2319A, and 2320. New language appears in bold typeface. The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS), Criminal Division, is preparing a supplement to the manual "Federal Prosecution of Violations of Intellectual Property Rights - Copyrights, Trademarks and Trade Secrets" which will explain and incorporate the changes effected by the NET Act. The supplement will be reproduced and distributed to recipients of the manual and will be posted on our website (www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *1.* The reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies of 1 or more copyrighted works which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more constitutes a felony, with a maximum sentence of three years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. The reproduction or distribution of 1 or more copies of 1 or more copyrighted works which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 constitutes a misdemeanor, with a one-year maximum sentence and a fine of up to $100,000. Return to CCIPS page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Last updated file February 18, 1998 usdoj-css/mam ------------------------------------------------------------------------

I never claimed it wasn't illegal, just that it wasn't particularly immoral. It's immoral, alright, but about as immoral as a dozen little things we do every day without being even aware of them, like buying products that, somewhere down the line, harm the environment. I didn't read it all because I'm not in the mood to parse through the screwed up formatting, which link was that? The DOJ can call it electronic theft all they want, it's not comparable to walking into a store and walking out with a shoplifted copy of WinXP.


Intellectual property violation. It's counterfeiting if you try to pass it off as the real thing, IE install it on a computer and sell that computer to naive consumers who don't know you're not buying proper OEM licenses.

But a rock does have value. I can throw it at someone's head, or I can bang it against another rock for noise and possibly fire, or I can hold down paper with it, or I can use it to keep my door open. The thing is, I can find nice, big rocks off the ground, and even if I would want to pay for a rock, one that has been banged with a blunt instrument isn't substantially more valuable, to me (Or even distinguishable from) a rock in natura.

Operating systems don't grow on trees, but it's as if they did. If you have internet access, you can download a free (As in speech) one legally off the internet, and burn a CD with it and install it for a cost that can easily be less than one dollar.. If you don't, you can order it through the mail and pay not for the OS, but for shipping and the CD it comes in - That comes for about $5, plus shipping. Or you can buy it with a book about how to use it, or a magazine about the subject, at costs that start at $10 or less. Or you can get a boxed set which gives you the OS bundled along with a nice box, a nice thick manual, and a right to plenty of tech support - $40 or more. Or you can order an old edition of Ubuntu from anywhere in the world, for free. Or you can buy a computer with Linux on it.

Now, Microsoft wants to compete with Linux. That's great. So they should be providing their OS for free too, or at least charging in the $40-60 price range and providing decent tech support. Or they could be making an operating system that is so much better, you're justified in spending $200 on it.

They're not doing any of those things because they don't need to; they have a monopoly on games (Macs can't break the monopoly because they're quite simply more expensive, so they don't really count - I would probably have a Mac if they cost as much as a PC did) and a defacto monopoly on supporting a lot of hardware. That, coupled with mindshare and the economic 'network effect', is what adds value to Windows. When I buy a copy of Windows, what I really am paying for (Because it's what has value to me) is simply the ability to, say, play the Sims 2 and transfer music to my iPod. The operating system itself has no value.

Additionally, Microsoft is evil. The Microsoft Tax is a prime example of that - OEM licenses given to VARs so they can pre-install Windows are 75% cheaper than boxed licenses of Windows. Most of their sales come from this kind of license. The major reason is simply that Microsoft can charge whatever they want, specially when people buy their FUD about piracy driving prices up.

Here in the Philippines, it's getting harder everyday because of our stupid politics and the ever increasing prices (such as Gasoline).

Since, as was mentioned, most can't afford to buy 'original' products, they buy pirated products instead for just two reasons, work and fun. They don't need no add-ons, no updates and stuff. Me and my dad has been using a pirated version of windows for 3 years till we end up using an original one which took us 15k Pesos (That's 5k each for our 3 computers and makes us kinda regret buying it since sometimes it crashes and some of our important files were deleted during the reformat.)

That 15k could have bought us some food, payed our bills and clothes for a few months.

People want cheap and effective products, not where its expensive and only to get it to work buy buying another product to add it on, that's stupid and just squeezing our limited resources. Pretty sure no sane mind would buy an original product to be dumped with updates, register thingies and etc which cost a lot more for just... let's say, games and a few programs for their work.

I rest my case...

I think this is both an insightful and compelling argument about the immorality of Microsoft. I agree completely with your conclusion that the corporation lacks ethics and engages in near criminal business practice. Awesome post. I would love to rely completely on Linux, but cursed, controlling Windows has far too big a monopoly on other software to make that practical.


Having said that, I'm not sure how that makes software piracy less immoral. As much as the modern world tries to teach us otherwise, two wrongs don't make a right - ethical behaviour doesn't only apply to ethical people, I thought. Torturing, raping, killing criminals is still ethically wrong, regardless of what they've done. Breaking the law to hurt a thief, is still breaking the law.

One us dollar, as of today, is just about equal to fifty Filipino Peseos.

So, if you spent 15k, that equates to: 300 dollars, US, which funny enough, is what it costs for us as well. You are paying no less, nor more then us. Now, the fact that you can afford to spend that much money also tells me your family is not poor. And before I get told again that I can not possibly know what it is like, I have spent a lot of time in the Philippines, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, etc... I am very well aware of the prices of things in these areas. (I actually was in Manila a few months ago as part of a training force teaching Filipino's how to fly some of the S3's they bought from the United States.)

I have found that quite often, I can get the same amount of food as I buy in the US for on average 1 dollar less for every 5 dollars spent. Hong Kong, it was more like 3 dollars less for every 5 spent.

Now onto the piracy, like I said much earlier, justified or not, stealing is wrong. Stealing is defined as the taking of property of others without permission. International Law defines intellectual work, like books, art, software, music, etc... as property of the copyright holder. Microsoft holds the copyright to Windows, therefore, stealing a copy of windows, be it through the internet or on a disk from the store, is THEFT by the OED discription of the word of stealing, and theft.

And it does drive up prices, again Verithrax, read those articles I posted, three of them deal with your whole 'product network' BS and all three make it very clear it only works when it is a minority of customers doing the piracy.

Verithrax you also, you mentioned that "You don't know about the lives of people in third world countries" and you are right. All I have seen of them is what I have seen when my ship was in port at one of these countries. However, what do you know about the lives of people in third world countries?

Well, 15k pesos and 3 comps, makes us rich?

The only situation I see where stealing could be well justified is to feed yourself or your family. This is not a necessity.

I said middle class, not rich. There is a differnce.

QFT.

Stealing someone's profit, or putative profit, is stealing in my book.

Saying Microsoft is evil and deserves to be pirated from (paraphrased, of course) is very childish.

I do have to ask this: If a poor person is stealing software to save on money for food... why do they have a computer in the first place?

Out of curiosity, are you aware of how much money is lost due to software piracy? A few billion dollars? No. Try 12 billion. As everyone keeps saying, since Microsoft is a monopoly (when it's actually an oligopoly), so they are, in essence, losing the bulk of that money. A bulk out of 12 billion is a LOT for any company to lose, even a company as rich as Microsoft.

(I'm not justifying Microsoft having it's prices rised that high, btw.)

You need to work on your knoweldge of ethisists. John Locke (assuming thats the correct name of the guy I'm thinking of, author of the essay "On Liberty") for example, is very much against making witchcraft illegal.

I have to wonder what experience you have living in the real world.

I'll let someone with more respect for your comments respond in detail if they so desire.


One has to wonder why this valueless item has no easily replaceable subsitute.

I can't afford to buy an OS for hundreds of dollars. I wasn't buying software when 98 was released (when it was cheaper) and I didn't drive the prices up. So, I see my options as either going without the software or obtaining it illegally. Sucks, but that's how it is for me.

Let's say you have two towns, A and B. In town A, you are beaten every time you appear in public without a hand stamp. In town B, you are not. In town A, that hand stamp can be sold for pretty much any price they want; you cannot reasonably live in that town without it. In town B, that same exact stamp is almost completely worthless, because it's of no real value.

If it is easily possible to move between these two towns, and communicate between them, people will freely decide which town to live in, and pay accordingly. If, however, all your family and friends lived in town A, and you couldn't get in touch with town B from there, the situation becomes quite different.



If I didn't play games on my computer, I would have absolutely no need for Windows. It's value for me would be $0. Since it is not, it's entire value lies in what price I assign to my ability to play my games (all legally bought). Very few people, I think, buy Windows because they want Windows. They're paying for a key to their other software, not for an OS. In Windows, Microsoft is basically selling their monopoly.

*sigh*

Its the opposite.

You can only find software for Windows, because developers only make the software for windows, because they don't have a market to make the software for some other platform.

As Macs became better, developers created software for macs. As Firefox became better than IE, developers made websites for Firefox. As flash became more popular than director, more people developed for flash players rather than shockwave.

OS2, Unix, Linux, and other OS have not done what Mac and Windows has done. Microsoft also makes lots of money in areas other than Windows. It is their single largest program making money, but not thier largest "department"

You would think with Linux being free, and an OS having 0 value, more people would develop software for Linux since more people would be demanding it. I wonder why FREE linux isn't more popular...

This is called a chicken and egg problem. People don't migrate to Linux because they need Windows to run the software they want to run. Developers don't make that software for Linux because people don't migrate to it. There's also the fact that no company is pouring millions of dollars into promoting Linux as a desktop platform. And the fact that Linux, in several countries, can't always legally play MP3s due to the patent-encumbered nature of the format - Same for several video formats. Windows' value stems not from programming but from three things: The Microsoft monopoly, the video and audio formats that are licensed by Microsoft or owned by Microsoft, and Microsoft's ad campaign - In fact, I would pay to have the applications and format support by itself, without the operating system, if I could use it with the OS of my choice. Application support is far off right now for games (Wine just has too much of a performance hit, as does Cedega which is based on it and the current drivers for most video cards), but hardware support is getting better (Video cards are generally supported now, as are wireless devices if you shop carefully) and codec support exists in the Linspire and Freespire distributions, and Linspire plans on distributing that support in a distribution-agnostic way for other Linux users. Windows didn't become popular, originally, because it was 'better'. It became popular because Microsoft's agreement with IBM made MS-DOS and subsequently Windows the OS that came bundled with the IBM PC and subsequently, IBM compatibles - Because IBM thought, and rightly so, that operating systems have no value. Their mistake was exactly paying for one. Microsoft has been leveraging their monopoly to keep a lockdown on applications development ever since.


The problem is in the word 'taking'. You're not taking anything, you're making a copy. If I buy a santa machine from you and use it to copy your santa machine, did I steal anything?

Those articles are nothing short of fine grade-A FUD. Even if piracy does drive prices up, Microsoft still operates with profit margins in excess of 100%. How I know that? Because most licenses MIcrosoft sells in a year when it does not release a new OS are OEM licenses, which can cost as little as one fourth of the cost of the software sold in a box to end-users. Why does Microsoft do that? Because when it sells to individuals, it can charge as much as it wants to. So it makes a ludicrously expensive version, and a crippled, still far too expensive version. When it sells to a VAR, it wants to make the cost of Windows low. It wants it to be invisible, in fact, so that they can pass the Windows Tax on to consumers easily and make it seem like Windows comes bundled for free. Hence, it charges a price approximating, but not at all reaching the cost of making the software.


I live in one.

I'd like to use this double post as an opportunity to point out the fact that I'm not talking about what is moral and what is not. I'm saying that some things are less immoral than others, and shouldn't be compared to others, more immoral things because, well, that's extremism.

And yes, there were ethicists against the burning of witches. There are ethicists against media conglomerates and corporate ownership of intellectual property.