Microsoft Plagued by Software Piracy

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Microsoft, as we all know, is the largest distributor of office software by far, as well as being the premier operating system provider worldwide. The trouble with being the best always comes at the price of software pirates stealing profits on a grand scale. It is estimated that there are at least six million websites dealing with the sale of illegal Microsoft software, costing the company millions in lost revenue.

Microsoft has even had issues with unethical use of its software by paying customers. It recently reduced the number of licenses available for TechNet subscribers to minimize the chances of piracy.
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And they haven't gone bankrupt and still make billions every year. My heart bleeds for them. Clearly those bastard pirates must be stopped!
 
Are they really losing money if the people that are pirating it would not have bought it anyway? If you are using Libre or OpenOffice because you do not want to spend that much money on MS Office (never mind that Office is bloatware), that's one thing. But If you are pirating Office because it is piratable, that's another. It comes down to would these same people that pirate buy Office if it was completely unpiratable. If they would not, then they cannot be look at as lost sales.
 
It is estimated that there are at least six million websites dealing with the sale of illegal Microsoft software
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No, it's 6 million take down requests for URLs, not web sites. It's probably no more than a few hundreds sites.
 
Is it entirely possible to know for a non-trivial sized IT department to know if they have covered absolutely every license MS requires? Last I heard it wasn't, and I doubt they have any cares to clean up their act.

Of course, this is all following the plan laid out back when Bill Gates was in charge.

1. Crush all opposition by any means necessary.
2. The competition can hardly compete against pirated goods in places you can't strong arm your way into.
3. Once you have a monopoly, force the pirates to pay up.

Of course, part 3 did pretty well in the US and other countries that the US can pass laws in. Getting the rest of the world to cough up would probably require old Bill to control both tactics and execution.
 
I remember during the period where there was actually competition for office software, Microsoft seemed unconcerned about piracy and made their software easily copied with a regular diskcopy command on the install floppies. No special utilities or cracked software. At the time there were common ways to prevent the media from being copied.

It was when PC use was first establishing itself. Nerds and kids graduating from college had a big sway in advising their future boss what to buy. So establishing a user base was critical.

Basically Microsoft allowed piracy as a way to dump Microsoft Office while appearing to be innocent meanwhile undermining their competitors because they had the cash from the OS side of the house to afford it.
 
It recently reduced the number of licenses available for TechNet subscribers to minimize the chances of piracy.
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Yet has not lowered the price of TechNet.

I got TechNet when it was 10 per product. They cut that to 5 about a year ago. Then a month or so ago they cut it to 3. They say its to "protect its value". Are you brain dead? Its reducing its value because in the 3-4 years I have had it the price has not changed.

I am to re-up next month and seriously considering dropping the program.
 
Eisenblut said:
Are they really losing money if the people that are pirating it would not have bought it anyway? If you are using Libre or OpenOffice because you do not want to spend that much money on MS Office (never mind that Office is bloatware), that's one thing. But If you are pirating Office because it is piratable, that's another. It comes down to would these same people that pirate buy Office if it was completely unpiratable. If they would not, then they cannot be look at as lost sales.
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I think that Microsoft is at a point where they're at the uncanny valley. Push too much and people will switch to open source alternatives. Push too little and people will pirate the crap out of it.

I believe that Microsoft will push too hard and people will switch to Libre or OpenOffice. Why people use MS Office is probably because of some College requirement. College websites require you to use IE or Safari to use it. My programming professor was even particular to what compiler I used.

Lets put it like this. If Microsoft isn't careful they could lose it all. I see very little reasons for people to be using Microsoft products over the open source alternatives. Especially for those who do the majority of their computing behind a web browser.
 
Doesn't it say illegal SALES, like those places in china selling fake pads. So this is actually lost revenue since its actually illegal stuff being BOUGHT not just downloaded.
 
Wumpus said:
Is it entirely possible to know for a non-trivial sized IT department to know if they have covered absolutely every license MS requires? Last I heard it wasn't, and I doubt they have any cares to clean up their act.
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There was, at least. Been a while since I looked into it. But there was a way to query the network for license information from one of the Windows servers. Iirc.
 
Wumpus said:
Is it entirely possible to know for a non-trivial sized IT department to know if they have covered absolutely every license MS requires? Last I heard it wasn't, and I doubt they have any cares to clean up their act.
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Could buy a blanket microsoft license for the entire department for product(s) (i know this is possible for a (non-profit) university... probably not possible for a (profit) business)
 
Eisenblut said:
Are they really losing money if the people that are pirating it would not have bought it anyway? If you are using Libre or OpenOffice because you do not want to spend that much money on MS Office (never mind that Office is bloatware), that's one thing. But If you are pirating Office because it is piratable, that's another. It comes down to would these same people that pirate buy Office if it was completely unpiratable. If they would not, then they cannot be look at as lost sales.
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These aren't free downloads. These are copies of their products that other people are selling illegally.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Doesn't it say illegal SALES, like those places in china selling fake pads. So this is actually lost revenue since its actually illegal stuff being BOUGHT not just downloaded.
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If they are illegal sales, you can bet they are at a reduced rate. People know where they can a legitimate copy - they choose not to.
 
Maybe these companies should stop selling their software for so much and more people would buy it instead of pirating it. Just my $0.02. :rolleyes:
 
Their prices are pretty high for the consumer market and even worse for enterprise products. Then again, what other options are there? *nix is the only valid alternative and it isn't very widespread despite the mobile sector picking up Android and Apple hiding it inside of their desktop OS.
 
popular things will be pirated with popularity, blizzard still made bank off sc2 despite massive piracy numbers
 
... not to put too fine a point on it: but Microsoft's ultra inflated prices and sheer egoism is responsible for far more loss of money than piracy ever will be.

I do admit that Microsoft probably is on the right track for anti-piracy with Windows 8. Simply make a product so bad that nobody will want it, period.
 
I don't understand the fight against piracy. Go after Joe Six Pack for grabbing a few songs off of Bittorrent. But if you walk into any flea market in the country there are booths (multiple) selling bootleg movies and music. Why is ok to sell the stuff but bad to download it? Seems like they are going after the wrong people (at first anyway).
 
Zerias said:
I do admit that Microsoft probably is on the right track for anti-piracy with Windows 8. Simply make a product so bad that nobody will want it, period.
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lol i was thinking the same thing
 
"Unethical use of its software by paying customers," LOL. How about, "Completely reasonable disregard for abusive and unethical drive-by EULA's?"
 
I think someone linked to the wrong story with the right title

http://torrentfreak.com/busted-microsoft-harbors-bittorrent-pirates-120527/
In recent weeks the anti-piracy antics of Microsoft have made the news on a few occasions. From censoring The Pirate Bay to funding BitTorrent poisoning startups, the software giant is determined to attack piracy head-on. But perhaps the company should make a start by educating its own employees first. In Microsoft’s offices around the world many company employees are using BitTorrent to download and share pirated movies.
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I went to technet the moment they cut from ten and claimed every license for every product just in case.
Glad I did.
 
Major_A said:
I don't understand the fight against piracy. Go after Joe Six Pack for grabbing a few songs off of Bittorrent. But if you walk into any flea market in the country there are booths (multiple) selling bootleg movies and music. Why is ok to sell the stuff but bad to download it? Seems like they are going after the wrong people (at first anyway).
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Because shutting down Miss Ho Kim at the local swap meet probably won't get anyone's attention. But slapping a multi-million dollar lawsuit on a college kid that was selling CD's to buy an extra 6-pack? Headline news. And is probably aimed to scare the crap out of kids downloading everywhere, at least in Westernized countries (no I don't think it worked).
 
Crikey anyone would think MS was as bad as Adobe.

Now there is a company of money grabbing twunts.
 
MS has two cash cows:

The vast majority of MS Office pirates would use free software alternatives, if they could't pirate Office. This would add momentum to alternatives, and cost MS sales.

Windows piracy should be practically non-issue in Western countries, where practically every PC is sold with a legal copy of Windows. Even people who don't want to use Windows are often forced to buy Windows to get the hardware for Linux. 3rd-worlders who pirate Windows would otherwise use an alternative OS.

MS isn't being hurt by piracy. In fact, piracy helps MS by helping to keep MS products dominate.
 
Methadras said:
Piracy is the reason MS is successful. To think otherwise is foolish.
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thats pretty much it right there

that being said there are some pretty crazy counterfeit copies of MS stuff, I ordered a copy of server 2003 standard through a legitimate reseller (a big one too) and it came in a totally legit looking microsoft OEM box, with all the right paperwork, CD's with holograms and the right looking sticker...

it wasn't until I could not read CD2 properly and playing with the CD a bit that I realized it was counterfeit, contacted the reseller and they denied it, then a couple days later they asked me to mail it back, week later got a new copy in the mail that was legit..
 
I've run trials in a VM before. When it'd expire I'd just back my shit up and go back to the snapshot I made when I first installed it. Prevent VM from syncing date / time and it worked fine.

Excuse me while I go twirl my mustache.
 
I'll be blunt. I've installed a windows trial for some development use. It expired and I never bothered because it never stopped working, just occasionally tells me it the license expired. I don't bother recharging the license because I don't care and i don't use the machine for anything but compilation and testing. Our (windows) customers are the ones who fork out the bucks to MS for running our software. And yes we only use the express version of visual studio.
 
I know....$200 for MS office is obsurd. Typical lifetime, to keep up to date, is 3 years and it is the best office package in the industry. I mean $0.18 per day is outrageous. Down with the 99.99999999999999999% who can afford that. It is oppression on a wordly scale. I mean...open source alternatives just don't exist and it is soooooooooo expensive. However, there is something worse yet..their OS which is $99. That $0.09/day is fucking highway robery. That much money might mean I would have to remove one pepperoni from my pizza and that is un-American.
 
OMG, software pirates are killing our business. We're gonna have to declare bankruptcy and get big governments to come up with the dumbest anti-piracy laws even an idiot couldn't come up with. What is it you're saying ?

HEY EVERYONE RECORD PROFITS THIS SEMESTER !!! :rolleyes:
 
JFL1969 said:
OMG, software pirates are killing our business. We're gonna have to declare bankruptcy and get big governments to come up with the dumbest anti-piracy laws even an idiot couldn't come up with. What is it you're saying ?

HEY EVERYONE RECORD PROFITS THIS SEMESTER !!! :rolleyes:
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I'm saying the "cost argument" is moot and a red-herring. It is just an excuse for people of low character to justify their actions.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Doesn't it say illegal SALES, like those places in china selling fake pads. So this is actually lost revenue since its actually illegal stuff being BOUGHT not just downloaded.
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Ding, ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Someone finally gets it. ;)
 
The big thing that is hurting them really bad is Windows 7 can be 100% hacked now to appear as 100% legit to Microsoft.

There are a handful of websites out there with a huge community that will make a custom SLIC firmware for your motherboard. Any motherboard.

So hacking is now done at the hardware level.

I admit to pirating Windows 95 back in the day but since XP, Vista and Windows 7, it's just too cheap not to buy your OS. If you're a cheap bastard, just pickup a copy of a Windows 7 upgrade disc with serial off eBay and install it. Those are cheap and you can trick the install to give you a full install on a clean PC. Grey area but still better than nothing.

Prices have really dropped on everything in the PC arena, even $5 steam games or Amazon sales. Just no reason to steal anything.
 
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