Here’s a relatively unique way to blame piracy – say that it’s the reason you don’t have a monopoly to avoid anti-trust fines.
There are those that hear the same old tired scapegoat. Profits down? Blame piracy. Sales down? Blame piracy. Sales up? It’s in spite of piracy and there could be more sales. Profits up? It’s in spite of piracy and they could be higher. Who knew that a major software giant would use piracy to their legal advantage?
It’s an interesting development. According to ALB Legal News located in Australia, “Microsoft may have a viable legal defence against its first ever anti-monopoly claim in China, given the prevalence of pirated Microsoft products in the country and how “market share” is defined by the Chinese authorities.”
The report further comments:
When lawyer Dong Zhengwei, a partner with Beijing-based Zhongyin law firm grabbed the headlines by alleging that Microsoft was using its dominant market share to manipulate software prices in China and calling for a US$1bn fine to be imposed on the global software giant, Microsoft global VP Zhang Yaqin was quick to reply with an interesting counter argument: “Microsoft did not even have the preconditions of conducting monopoly activities in China,” he said “genuine Microsoft products have a very low market share in China because its products are widely pirated.”
It may be a form of confirmation that major corporations need piracy at some point in their existence to gain an edge in the market. While most examples point to long-term solutions, this may be one of the few instances that it’s actually going to help the corporation in the short term.
The debate over whether or not piracy actually helps the major incumbent industries has been around for years. The timing on this, though, is interesting given that it was only late last month that Russell McOrmond pointed to an article on how software piracy actually aids proprietary software in the war between proprietary software and open source/free software.
While the excuse may be convenient for Microsoft at this point, it’s doubtful the company will be thanking software pirates afterwords if the legal argument works.
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Let’s say for example it will be impossible to pirate windows anymore as from tomorrow. I can imagine exactly what will happen the move to Linux and the like would be massive so much so that Microsoft would wish people would again pirate their products. In the case of software I think piracy can help the product particularly with an O.S. It would be a bad move if Microsoft clamp down heavily on piracy Linux is already very appealing for many reasons all people need is that one last good reason to switch then in time corporations will follow as people are more familiar with Linux than Windows.
The only major hurdle holding Linux back is software compatibility. For me, its Photoshop (I managed to get it running with CrossOver Linux (http://www.codeweavers.com/)), iTunes (being able to access the store), Some 3D Architecture Programs (3D Home Design, 3D Home Architect) which I have numerous files created on, and a few shareware/freeware programs which I haven’t been able to find Linux equivalents for. If I could get those maybe half a dozen programs, I would never have to use Windows again.