[Infowarrior] - If you must pirate, use counterfeit Windows

[Richard Forno]

If you must pirate, use counterfeit Windows
MS exec gets pragmatic about piracy
By John Leyden → More by this author
Published Tuesday 13th March 2007 13:14 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/13/ms_piracy_benefits/

A senior Microsoft exec has admitted that some software piracy actually ends
up benefiting the technology giant because it leads to purchases of other
software packages.

In this way, some software pirates who might otherwise never try Microsoft
products become paying customers, according to Microsoft business group
president Jeff Raikes.

"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than
somebody else," Raikes told delegates at last week's Morgan Stanley
Technology conference in San Francisco, Information Week reports.

Raikes' stance seems at odds with the Microsoft's recent aggressive
anti-piracy push, via its controversial Windows Genuine Advantage Programme,
which resulted in many instances where legitimate users were identified as
using "dodgy" software. And that's to say nothing of the millions Microsoft
spends every year on other anti-piracy initiatives.

Rather than saying that piracy isn't a problem per-se, Raikes reckons that
between 20 and 25 per cent of US software is pirated, he argues
pragmatically that it can have benefits over the long-run. "We understand
that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people
who are using our products," Raikes said. "What you hope to do over time is
convert them to licensing the software," he said.

Although Microsoft has no intentions of scaling down (much less abandoning)
its effort to chase software counterfeiters, Raikes argues that it's against
its interests to push illegitimate users so hard that they wind up using
alternative products. "You want to push towards getting legal licensing, but
you don't want to push so hard that you lose the asset that's most
fundamental in the business," Raikes said, adding that Microsoft is
developing "pay-as-you-go" software pricing models in a bid to encourage
low-income people in emerging countries to use its technology.

Raikes' intervention provides a welcome perspective on the software piracy
debate which has for a long time been dominated by the simplistic argument,
wheeled out ad nauseum by industry groups such as the Business Software
Alliance, that a copy of pirated software is equivalent to a lost sale.