Piracy: Friend or Foe?

Despite last year’s promise of a government-assisted Linux tidal wave in Thailand, little has changed on this particular beach front of the Information Society. By some estimates, Linux still counts for an infinitesimal one-tenth of one percent of the Thai market, whereas various versions of Windows control 90 percent.

In response to Bangkok’s pressure, Microsoft dropped its prices 85 percent locally in Thailand. However, in spite of reduced pricing, the relative market for purchased copies of Windows appears to be ever shrinking. Comparatively fewer new systems are being shipped with legitimate copies of Windows. That is, piracy remains substantially undiminished. This is no victory at sea for Microsoft.

Instead of a Linux tsunami or, alternatively, a Microsoft triumph in Thailand, we see the flood of continued piracy. Free is free, after all. Ironically, while piracy strangles Redmond’s profiteering, it simultaneously makes Linux irrelevant for the average user. With piracy, the hottest and most familiar proprietary technologies are available at the same price point as the relatively unfamiliar and less popular open source alternatives.

Too often the ordinary user cannot perceive the benefits of using OSS instead of pirated equivalents. The business proposition of open source relies on the fair exchange of value inherent in a services model, which, in turn, can produce a more even distribution of wealth at a societal level. But this treasure may lie hidden in the dynamics of the macroeconomy, so the ordinary user is easily persuaded to use the pirate’s treasure.

Profiteering encourages Piracy

In Thailand and other developing economies, for now at least, the buccaneers command the high seas of the Information Society. Yet if Redmond’s Intellectual Property commandos can defeat the pirates, does the Information Society benefit or do the royal coffers simply grow even larger?

To counterbalance this perception of being a greedy giant, Microsoft has launched a global campaign to rehabilitate itself as a better corporate citizen of the Information Society. Microsoft has set up regional and national chief technology officers who can argue the local benefits of their tools and technologies. And it has begun to invest in local educational and employment projects.

All it asks in return is help in protecting its Intellectual Property, to reinforce and assist its commandos. Unfortunately, their IP bosses rarely question the right to accumulate wealth beyond their wildest needs, even as payment is extracted from the poorest of the poor on the south side of an invidious exchange rate. In a perverse balance of fair play, continued profiteering encourages continued piracy.

What to do?

The good news is that the components of OSS have dramatically matured in the last several years and have become more than adequate for almost all automation jobs, whether on the desktop, on backend servers or embedded in increasingly pervasive devices. This puts pressure on the proprietary vendors to justify their prices. And with true competition from OSS, revenue from legitimate licenses will inevitably weaken. This has already happened with old Unix. More than ever, proprietary vendors must strengthen their resolve to combat further erosion of value due to piracy. As Microsoft, Sun and others anticipate, piracy ultimately will be defeated by a subscription model of software deployment. It is at this tipping point of enforced subscriptions that the free and open source software floodgates will be guaranteed to open, when “free as in piracy” no longer works. The ordinary user may then discover the OSS treasure that has been there all along.