Can piracy help to develop a country's IT industry?
By cristi12
@cristi12 (378)
Romania
March 6, 2007 7:12am CST
Recently, at the opening of a new Microsoft technical center in Romania, at which Bill Gates was present, president Traian Basescu told Gates that software piracy helped the younger generation discover computers, and it helped Romania develop one of the best eastern European IT industries. Gates had no response. So basically, he told the Microsoft chairman that he's happy people were pirating Microsoft products.:))
Personally, I think piracy did help IT development in my country, at least at the home-user level. Today piracy levels are significantly lower than they were 5 years ago, and the IT industry is flourishing. People around here can't afford to pay for every software, movie or song they listen to. The retail Windows Vista price here is bigger than minimum wage, so not everybody can afford to buy genuine software.
What is your oppinion?
Do you think piracy has it's role in the IT development and education?
2 responses
@liming (114)
• China
6 Mar 07
Microsoft's strategy is to ignore piracy at the beginning, then after nearly everyone using its products, MS will start compress piracy. Now eveyone has the custom of using MS' product, which forces him get out money from his pocket to buy the genuine version.
@fxfriski (209)
• Singapore
7 Mar 07
Anti piracy laws. The Microsoft strategy was provided by the marketing Guru, Jay Abraham.
You can choose either a user friendly, software developer friendly software or a not so user friend, not so software developer friendly software.
Comparing the pros and cons, business users will most likely take MS.
Of course things might be changing with the introduction of OpenOffice and such...
@Karmalina (647)
• Australia
6 Mar 07
For some things like operating systems piracy shouldn't be a big issue anyway, because it shouldn't cost $200 for a stupid piece of software that everyone needs to um... operate their computer. (C'mon Linux make a showing soon pleeeease! hehe) I think if there weren't a lot of piracy software companies would be far less popular and dirt poor, poor people wouldn't get started learning how to use software because they couldn't afford to and companies like Adobe for instance... I know at least 10 artists that are great in Photoshop, but if they hadn't um... borrowed some software they would have never learned how to create digital art. Several of these people have gone on to purchase a legal version of photoshop because it's making them money now. Do you think adobe would be able to sell to any of my overly critical, cynical friends (no offense guys) if piracy didn't exist? And no... that 30 day trial isn't long enough to decide if you like it.
Maybe Microshaft should start making a version of windows that you pay for by doing surveys every month for 2 years or something. I'd be on that bandwagon because pirating software isn't my cup o tea. Unfortunately something like that will never happen. Software companies are super greedy =(
@cristi12 (378)
• Romania
6 Mar 07
That is true, and whatmore, I think all software companies are aware of the effect piracy has on their software sales. I also know people who work as digital photographers, who also happen to use Photoshop. It takes a lot of time to see if you have talent with it, and a trial isn't enough. The main reason companies are pressing everybody against the wall with piracy issues is to scare or force more people to go legit, so they can make more money. And the huge pricing isn't justified as well. The thing is, why sell 10 copys of Windows at 20$ when I can sell 1 at 200$? Less taxing, marketing costs user/technical support issues, shipment, materials, etc. Why bother selling cheaper? The profits would be lower, and nothing would benefit the software developers.
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