Microsoft is not going to stop piracy by shutting down Mom & Pop shops.
The amount of money they need to invest in the court system vs. the
amount of money they will get is low. What Microsoft is more interested
in are the people selling counterfeit copies into the channel, selling
software that is licenced wrong to the channel, etc.
Case in point: The OEM I used to work for got a smoking deal on Office
97 Pro for $99/copy. It looked like an OEM copy, but in fact was an
"Easy Fufillment Licence" which was basically just media and a CD key
without a licence. We got audited, and the company that we bought that
software got fined HEAVILY. And if you don't believe me, wait for
Warpmedia to read the list because we both worked at the same shop when
this happened.
Thane Sherrington wrote:
At 12:19 PM 03/08/2005, Ben Ruset wrote:
You don't think that MS won't go after these companies when they have
to give out free XP licences to the end users???
They never have in the past. I have reported two companies two or three
times a year for four years. The result? Nothing. MS doesn't give a
shit about me. And they don't care about you. Why people defend large
companies because they bought their products is beyond me. MS is
necessary (right now.) It's not good or bad. It just is. And all it
cares about is itself and it's shareholders, and that's fine. But when
they do something stupid, there's nothing wrong with saying so.
T
