MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-05-06 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Free Software Advocates want greater Software Priracy policing
|
The French have somehow picked up a reputation as haters of big American business. It's not hard to see how that came about, when you consider that their biggest folk hero of recent years, the farmer José Bové, was catapulted to fame almost overnight for his part in the 1999 destruction of a new McDonald's fast-food restaurant in a rural corner of southern France.
So it's doubly strange to hear of the latest initiative by the French Association of Linux Users (AFUL): The group wants the government to crack down on piracy of software products from companies such as Microsoft, it announced Tuesday. It also wants stores to display separately the price of software packages such as Microsoft Office when they are bundled with new computers, so that consumers are aware of their true cost.
Come again? Linux users -- and French ones at that -- are trying to stop something that might be hurting Microsoft? Have they gone mad?
Method to the Madness
Reader Tools
E-Mail Article
Printer Version
Related Stories
Talkback
Author Search
It may appear that way, but there is method in their madness, according to AFUL spokesman Bernard Lang: Rampant piracy actually helps Microsoft in some markets, he says, and that's why AFUL wants the government to put a stop to it.
Companies like Microsoft sell different versions of their products at prices that appeal to different markets. For instance, Microsoft Office 2003 Professional edition carries the highest price of all the versions of the Office suite. There's also the Standard version, available at a lower price but with fewer features, and an even cheaper edition, with a more restrictive license, for academics and students.
That doesn't address the whole market, however. At the bottom end, there are many prospective customers who can't afford the EUR580 (US$700) retail price of Microsoft Office 2003 Standard edition.
And that's precisely how piracy helps Microsoft, according to Lang: The company is not actually losing a sale if a hard-up consumer copies Office -- but it is retaining market share at the expense of open source alternatives and contributing to the vital network reinforcing effect that makes people use Microsoft Office because everyone else uses it.
Microsoft's Interests
"It's in Microsoft's interest that even the impoverished use their software," Lang said.
Business users tend not to pirate software because of the high penalties if they are caught, according to Lang: The real culprits are home users.
The IT industry is in part responsible for this piracy, according to AFUL: Because of the way prices are displayed for bundles of software and hardware sold together, consumers are led to believe that software is free -- and so, naturally, don't want to pay for it.
Of course, says Lang, there's no reason why consumers should pay for software when open source alternatives are available for free.
The Price of Bundled Software
Related Stories
Using Linux in Your Resume
06-May-04
IT Insiders Consider the Cost of Linux
05-May-04
Red Hat Launches New Desktop Linux
04-May-04
Inside Apple's G5 Shift
04-May-04
The Challenge Apple Faces in Enterprise Computing
04-May-04
If otherwise law-abiding citizens appreciated the true cost of software such as Microsoft Office, Lang contends, they'd be less likely to pirate it -- hence the group's demand that stores display the price of the software element of a bundle.
"We know that the big distribution chains deliberately don't display the price (of bundled software), often because their contracts don't allow them to," he says.
Yet France has strict rules governing the display of prices in stores, which go so far as to spell out that when a price is displayed for a six-pack of beer, the price of each element of the bundle -- each can -- must also be displayed.
Government Move on Piracy
So far, the French Directorate General of Competition, Consumer Protection and Suppression of Fraud has not indicated whether this rule also applies the elements of a software and hardware bundle.
Once this stage of customer education is under way, AFUL wants the government to move to stamp out piracy, particularly at the consumer end of the market.
"We want them to respect their own rules and put an end to piracy, to acknowledge that intellectual property has a value, and to display its price," he said.
© 2004 Networkworld Inc i/a/w Pinnacor, Inc. All rights reserved.
--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.inns.net <-- Happy Clients
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
|
|
