$500M Piracy Ring Busted In China 154
Blahbooboo3 writes "Reported by several news organizations, pirated software worth more than $500 million has been seized by authorities in China as part of a joint operation run by Chinese police and the FBI. Microsoft estimates that the software piracy of an international counterfeiting syndicate, over the past six years, cost the company at least $2 billion in lost software revenue. Microsoft said that key information in the investigation came from its Windows Genuine Advantage program, an anti-piracy system that can check whether an OS is legit. It's generally accepted that Microsoft has done well out of software piracy: it helps products become widely used, and as the market matures, people start to pay for their software. And this has been a major factor in Windows beating Linux in China, as Bill Gates has admitted."
And the global picture... (Score:1)
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It isn't. And there are people who would use that exact point to argue that illicit drugs should be legalized. After all, we're spending billions and billions of dollars going after these drug rings and it's all for naught.
The difference with software, however, staying on topic, is that Microsoft knows that it's pointless to try to stop all piracy and, in fact, they count on it. As Bill Gates once said (paraphrasing): "We don't want
I wonder what slashdotters like best (Score:1, Flamebait)
-or-
The RIAA/MPAA/BSA/
Turns out it just doesn't work without laws
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But of course. (Score:2)
The fact that it has nothing to do with bittorrent means nothing. It will be used as an opportunity to say something on the lines of "If its happening there, it must be happening here. Evil,evil,evil!"
3/4 to go (Score:1)
Codename "Summer Solstice" (Score:5, Informative)
(link is to the FBI press release for this case).
OPERATION "Summer Solstice" (Score:2, Funny)
Operation Summer Soltice. Of course, the FBI use the OSS acronymn, because the WGA is driving people to OSS.
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I'm so glad that the FBI has taken time off from ignoring warnings about terrorists training to fly jumbo jets to go after the real threat to the American way of life: Chinese software pirates......
As the market matures (Score:5, Interesting)
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I am skeptical of the claim that 2 billion was lost from this one pirate.
How much does Microsoft make in all of China?
As Mencius wrote, in a world without walls or fences, who needs windows or gates?
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There are so many factors at play that it isn't possible to infer if this raid has any effect on their bottom line.
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How Microsoft Conquered China (Score:2)
Currently about $700 million USD or 1.5% of global sales.
Today Gates openly concedes that tolerating piracy turned out to be Microsoft's best long-term strategy. That's why Windows is used on an estimated 90% of China's 120 million PCs. "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not," Gates says. "Are you kidding? You can get the real thing, and you get the same price." Indeed, in China's back alleys, Linux often
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What of course is odd is that a authoritarian anti-democ
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$500M? (Score:1)
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You're a factor of 1000 out.
But, in principle, yes it's very likely they're calculating value based on the US purchase price of the official software (not including manufacturing costs, warehouse, distribution, retailer's cut etc.)
My God! (Score:1, Funny)
Don't worry about Linux (Score:5, Funny)
The price of piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike things like producing a line of denim clothing and putting the Levis brand on it, creating pirated software costs virtually nothing. It takes just as much effort to copy a DVD containing your latest vacation photos as copying a DVD containing a $10k software package.
Just because they discovered a few thousand copies of expensive software doesn't mean that it either cost that much to produce, or has that much sale value (pirated software sells for far less). Neither does it mean that the loss in sales is nearly as much, as many of those who buy/download pirated software would never have bought the software in the first place.
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Then it is still a lost sale because the person obviously wanted the product but was too cheap or poor to buy it legally.
One can argue that the overall value of lost sales is not correct as more than likely the figures used are based on U.S. dollars, but the fact that people do have these illegal copies does mean lost sales. Eithe
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Not quite. Let's use Adobe Photoshop as an example
They can:
1) Want to use the product but not afford retail price.
1a) They pirate it
1b) They choose an alternative (Paint Shop Pro or GIMP) that isn't quite what they wanted but does an acceptable job and is cheaper ($100-150 and free, respectively).
2) Want to use the product and can afford/justify its exorbitant
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There are 3 kinds of people:
Now, if you have X many people who have the software and say 20% fall into the first category and 80% fall into the second category.
Now, remove the software from the second category an
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Re:The price of piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Publilius Syrus ~100BC
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Pirated software (in particular CD-with-sharpie, not counterfeit that tries to fake the real thing) doesn't have much sales value because of competition. Let's take say the Adobe CS3 Master Collection, priced at 2500$. Let's say you're willing to pay 1000$ tops, so you're not buying it from Adobe. But if you buy a pirated copy for 1000$, you're a fool even though it's 1500$ off Adobe's value. Why? Because every pirate-wannabe with a little kn
Windows beating Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
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Naaaa, couldn't be that!
You can debate, argue, point all one wants. BUT the reality of the matter is that people seem to continue buying Windows, year after year. Some of that may be lock in, but I doubt 100% of that is lock in. Thus when everything is done and said, maybe there might be a few million people who actually prefer Windows...
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If windows is easy to use, how do you explain that most people don't even use 10% of the capabilities of the machine? How many people have Media center pc with a DVD writer and go out and buy the DVD recorder from Circuit City because they could not fi
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I thought easier to use and familiarity go hand and hand?
Because Circuit City had a damn good sales staff! [slashdot.org]
I'm not sure what you mean by incompatibility; you may want to go in depth. You can mount NTFS in Linux, lots of hardware works for Windows, I'm not sure where the incompatibility ex
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Imagine you have a car with terrible steering. It always veers to the right, and has terrible understeer.
Now you get a brand new car, and it doesn't veer to the right. And it turns perfectly, without understeer or oversteer.
You'd still have to get used to not having to correct the understeer.
Just because you're familiar with it, doesn't mean the car with the understeer is the easiest to use.
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I thought easier to use and familiarity go hand and hand?
You've touched on a really good point. A lot of the "Linux is so hard to use" discussion I see simply boils down to people unfamiliar with Linux. They're Windows power users who are put off by a system that doesn't behave as they would expect it to (that is - like Windows) and who forget Windows' own warts.
I used to be in the Windows power user camp. Linux appealed to me and I dove in head first. Now I'm so far out of practice with Windows that Linux is a snap and Windows is a PITA to deal with (much t
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Though Linux on the desktop for "easy" jobs like mail its ok as well. But here are the issues I just keep running into.
1) Media is choppy. I keep having problems where I can't listen to multiple streams at once
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1) Media is choppy. I keep having problems where I can't listen to multiple streams at once. Let's say I am watching a DVD, put it on pause and then want to listen to a podcast. I get audio device errors galore.
I agree on this. Now days, it's an iffy thing. Some of my systems behave flawlessly. Some systems are quirky. Some just don't play nice with multiple streams at all. And that all depends on the application, of course. I wish it was all smooth - it is on Windows. However, I also note that things have improved a lot over the years (albeit slower than one would like). Most of the time I don't run in to this particular annoyance.
2) If I compile something heavy duty and then want to watch a DVD, no can do, even though I multi-core CPU. Windows? No problem I regularly run big simulations on one CPU, while watching a DVD at the same time.
I get some mixed results on this as well. Depends on how much effort I p
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CrossOver Office works pretty well for me for Word and Excel. They're not perfect--I see the occasional weird little glitch, but they work well enough for my purposes.
What I need and don't have with a Linux desktop is Photoshop. I try the Gimp every now and then but it just doesn't work for me (poor LAB and CYMK support are the big ones).
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The Gentoo builds were flagging the module as experimental until 2.6 came along.
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That statement is so wrong. AFAIK, NIS doesn't work on Windows. Without Cygwin, and even with it, most of the Linux software does not work in Windows. OS X apps don't work on Windows.
What locks people in is that for most people Windows simply is "good enough". Just like for most people crappy cars (like the one I drive) -- because its good enough. McDo
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Once anything gets to be the local standard, people will get locked in. To do business with your neihgbour, you have to have same standards. If everybody else on your business area uses some format, you have to be compatible with them to keep your business alive. If Red Flag Linux(?) would get to be the standard, you wouldn't see that many windows stores around. In earlier days when there was Word Perfect and MS word compiting on wordproses
Rather expensive disks (Score:1)
I wonder what software (besides 47000 disks of Windows Vista) they were making.
This is/was a criminal organization (Score:1)
Ob chinky joke (Score:3, Funny)
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How is incollect steliotypes considered funny? The Chinese actually are the asian country with a distinct L and L sound. Those without that distinction pronounce L as L. Not L as L. And no I'm not Asian. Please do
Counted how? (Score:2)
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TFA said 290,000 CDs. These normally retail for about US$0.50 in China, up to US$3 or $4 sometimes in Hong Kong. So "street value" between $150,000-$800,000 max. Street value is how drug busts are valued, why not software? For the same reason, of course: they choose the larger number to make it sound more dramatic. And Slashdot goes along
Arr! (Score:3, Funny)
Software Piracy ('soft-"wer 'pI-r&-sE): Robbery of software on the high seas; the taking of software from others on the open sea by open violence; without lawful authority, and with intent to steal.
Vista sales (Score:2, Funny)
What? You don't think so? Aw, c'mon...
Deliberate allowance of piracy = case of estoppel? (Score:2)
Since Microsoft allows piracy, can the company lose its copyright?
Microsoft definitely encourages piracy, in my opinion. For years, local computer stores carried to office suite alternatives: Legal Microsoft Office, and pirated Microsoft Office for $50. Word Perfect and Lotus could not compete.
I'm not sure what local computer stores are doing now.
Estoppel by silence (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Deliberate allowance of piracy = case of estopp (Score:2)
"Anyone can do anything" is a license? (Score:2)
moo (Score:2)
I have lost revenue because people aren't buying my software.
I want to sell it for 100 billion but since people aren't buying it must be pirates. Do I get a newspaper story for "losing" that much?
P.S. If anyone has 10E11 then Email me to get the address of my site.
P.P.S. Did you know that the interjection, I get to use that word!!, "arr" was actually started from some actor in the '60s (19 that is)?
Or at lesast I heard that.
Chinese Government M$... paranoia (Score:3, Interesting)
*puts tinfoil hat back on*
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$500 million from what perspective (Score:2)
How to stop piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
The bigger issue is that the chinese gov. has tied their money to America's. In effect, they have made imports to America dirt cheap, but exports to China very expensive. This is designed to kill America.What GWB should be doing rather than trying to pushing more laws, is pushing for china to allow the money to float freely. Right now, if they money was untied, the price of our goods to china would drop to somewhere between 1/2 to 1/5 of the current amount. IOW, a chinese person would see our goods cost 1/2 to 1/5 of what they are currently being charged.
It isn't $2 billion in lost revenue! (Score:2)
MS BS (Score:2, Insightful)
That's bullshit. The Chinese are pirating software because they can't afford the real thing. If they weren't pirating Windows, they simply wouldn't have it. Therefore, Microsoft has lost no money to software piracy, because there was never potential for them to get any. However, if Microsoft started selling legit copies of Windows
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This is very complicated issue. If I'd fly to China and bought hundred copies of legimate copies of Vista for very cheap, why couldn't I use them in western countries. After all, MS sold them and licensed them, so those must be legal.
As for being able to sell as cheap as for counterfeits, legimite copies would need to
China story (Score:2)
So I went to see it opening night. Ticket prices were about $10.40 each 80 RMB. Per Ticket, a very high price in China considering most people in that neighborhood only made 1000 RMB or less even.
As I left the theater, there was a street vendor there holding out a very professional looking DVD packag
Monetary loss? (Score:2)
Can they really report monetary loss if someone using the pirated version of would never have purchased it in the first place?
I'm not condoning illegal activity, but under the following circumstances, can monetary loss still be claimed if someone downloads (for example) Microsoft Office 2000, but:
1) doesn't incur any direct charges to Microsoft (ie cd media, bandwidth, etc)
2) would never have purchased the soft
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It's called corruption.
Wrong estimates (Score:2)
Excellent News! (Score:2)
Big deal... (Score:2)
This is just like Blizzard banning a few hundred 'token' gold farmers, so they can claim they're doing SOMETHING.
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You taxes pay for the US infrastructure that allowed companies like microsoft to arise, and thus companies pay back into the tax system. But when foreign
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On the bright side, because of them I was able to buy some out of print disney DVDs for my kids...
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Nobody comes knocking down your door, no tax implications, no fees to fat cats, no copy problems.
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I have a better solution: cut spending.
Ya.. (Score:2)
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Well, I am not an American and I do not care how much taxes the Americans have to pay.
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Re:$500 million (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$500 million EXACTLY (Score:2, Insightful)
remember that the person who pays 5$ for a windows copy, will A) know not to ask questions or tell anyone about it B) buy a copy for thier friends if they need it without telling any names, C) if they get caught are in as much trouble therefor would not want to implicate anyone.
Short of using extreme torture tactics, these guys stick together....this to me was the chinese goverments fault because they wanted
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So when my house is stripped and my car is stolen, I am only entitled to a recovery at the thieves' market price?
The five-fingered discount.
You have a promising career in claims adjustment.
Re:$500 million - Suspicious Math - $1,100 a copy? (Score:2)
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Then maybe the pirates should set up their own development shops, charge slightly more, and go for volume. Since AutoCAD as already mentioned; let's go with that. I'm pretty sure that a group of pirates could get together and build an application with the same quality and feature set of AutoCAD and sell it legally for $10 instead of selling an illegal copy on the street for $5. I mean, how hard could it be?
I me
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I mean, it's not like a few thousand person-years of development by people with BS/MS/PhD's and tons of talent, skill, and passion is worth anything, right?
And it's not like AutoDesk (to take your example) spent all those talent soaked man-years to develop a product specifically to market in China. That cost has already been amortized over many many sales in the western economy.
You forget that all developing economies emerged and prospered by ripping off and copying technology from developed economies (think Japan). They could re-invent the wheel, but they don't bother. That is not a true loss to the original wheel-inventor.
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Ok, so you're saying piracy is OK -- even though in this case 70% of the pirated software went to the US and other western countries -- because the western economy should subsidize China?
Given our current trade deficit that's even more laughable. Yes, the US is currently a service-based economy and China is mostly a manufacturing economy. Let's give away or let them steal all of our services and IP while buying all of their products. That makes *total* sense to me.
The good news is that the reality is th
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I would suggest that piracy in China will wane at a similar rate to the improvement of living/working conditions (or exchange rates move to compensate). By then, the institutional infrastructure will be in place to ensure legitimate copies of AutoCAD
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You are wrong (Score:2)
No, it does not take away from Jobs. MS needs X amount of people to develop the software. What this may impact is the price of software, but that's not true either because there is no real competition for MS so they charge as much as the can get people to pay, which is a lot higher then it would be if they had competitio
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