Toolkit

Story: Counting the cost of counterfeiting

Posted by: Arthur B. (Tuesday 23 May 2006, 9:27 PM)

Microsoft should stop the double speak.
Either legalize home use or make more then a best effort to stop illegal home use.

The fact however is that Microsoft likes it two ways. On the one hand they want to cry foul and waive with research that speaks of absurd losses so they can demand stricter laws and more (freedom of) powers.
On the other hand, more then anything, they rather see people using Microsoft software illegally then seeing people using Microsoft alternatives legally.
And, on top of that all, they get paid for every PC sold and offload the support costs and issues to the resellers.

Now if it was the case that the true market demand was that, yes, we want our consumer rights restricted, yes, we want fewer civilian rights, yes, we like to pay whatever extra tax we can on hardware purchased, yes, we want second rate support, yes, we want to pay premium inflated prices for our software and, yes, no matter how absurd things get we will follow to the last letter every crazy rule layed upon us then we're ahead of schedule for sure.

But reality is that the actual market demand is freedom of choice and to pay reasonable prices for THEIR situation in WAYS they like which, by definition, excludes absurd restrictions and inflated prices.

So I would like to call votes for either: legalize home use, or, hunt down illegalize home use with all technical and legal means possible which is a lot more then is currently happening. Fact is that I wouldn't be surprised if more then 90% of illegal home users know full well that they are illegal home users.

But Microsoft won't do that because they know that the instant the illegal home users have no other option then to pay the asked price they'll drop Microsoft in a second. Most certainly if that asking price was increased with penalties. So Microsoft should stop wining about their 'revenue loses'. Heck, these guys want to sell us Microsoft DRM solutions yet they even can't separate between legal and illegal use. How's that going to protect your vital company data?

Ofcourse the alternative solution would be if Microsoft would start delivering accoording to realistic customer demand. But no politician or law maker out there forcing Microsoft to do exactly that. I wonder why?