Friday, September 01, 2006

Chinese Pirates

According to a report in the Bangkok Post, "Nearly half of all books, films, music CDs and software sold in China are illegally copied". Now I find it very hard to believe that it could be less than 50%. The Chinese are much smarter than that!

I have always had the view that if the sticker price is much higher than the price to reproduce, than you will always have illegal copies being made. For software, I would love for Microsoft (and others) to find a secure way of protecting their licensing of their software. This would force people to look at the alternative free Open Source software such as Solaris, BSD, Linux and Open Office. Companies like Microsoft using the old "high admission fee" model will one day have to change their ways. They maybe able to hold their market share for a little longer in the developed world, but there is a much larger market in the developing world who are much more price sensitive.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i am a chinese............

Doug Scott said...

anonymous said -
i am a chinese............

Anonymous, that is nice. Hoist the Jolly Rodger.

Anonymous said...

it's sad to see those words, i do not wanna a Jolly Rodger.I just can not write any words because of the illegally copies of books and softwares.
it is true ,many chinese use them.
but not all.

Doug Scott said...

Anonymous, the words are not sad. What is sad is that the press are focussing on developing countries. Copyright piracy is common place in many developed countries. Focussing the blame countries like China is sad. The article should focus on why people do not want to (or can not) buy the product. Is it really worth hundreds of dollars???

While copyright should protect the producer, there needs to be a counter balance to give choice for the consumer. It is nice to see Open Source give that to the software world. Let it roll on.