Software Industry Misleads China On Economics Of Piracy
from the tired-fallacies dept
Earlier this week we looked at Microsoft's unconvincing argument that software piracy is hurting the Indonesian economy, in their bid to win stricter anti-piracy laws. It seems that the industry has now moved on to China, trying to use the soft sell in convincing the government that they'd be better off cracking down on piracy, using many of the same arguments. While there may be a legitimate case that piracy hurts the economy, they seem to think they're dealing with fools. As Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, stepping up to the plate for the software makers, put it, "One study projects that if China cut its software piracy rate down from 90 percent to 80 percent by 2009, it would generate the equivalent of $6.5 billion in taxes, in tax revenues that could be reinvested back in society." Riiiight, except that why is it better to give tax money to the government and have them re-invest it, than to let businesses keep it and invest it themselves? You'd think the US was the socialist country. He also uses the specious argument that cracking down on piracy would lead to more jobs in software. If they wanted to, they could achieve the same thing by starting a massive state run software company. The goal should be to have an efficient IT sector, not necessarily one that employees a lot of people. Perhaps instead of trying to trick foreign countries using loaded data, the software industry would be better off focusing on products and services that present a compelling value for overseas businesses. Just a thought. Update: Seems the software industry and the Commerce Department are getting pretty cozy, as a former VP of the BSA has been confirmed as the department's new Undersecretary for Technology.
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yeah, why aren't we appointing someone that knows nothing about technology!? What's Michael Brown doing these days?
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What form of government is it, then, that allows businesses to steal from one another so they can "reinvest" the proceeds?
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Huh? Where does tax money go other than to the government? And the businesses don't have the money to keep, seeing as how 90% of the software is apparently being stolen instead of paid for.
Then you insuate some sort of conflict of interest with your report that the Commerce Dept. actually hired someone with qualifications to be Undersecretary of Technology. The BSA operates much like a political organization; it seems to me that a VP from there would be ideal for a gov't position.
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Re: businesses really save around 100 billion
The real $ amount would be be around $100 billion they have to invest.
China will only do something about it when they have something worth stealing...
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Re:
Huh? Where does tax money go other than to the government? And the businesses don't have the money to keep, seeing as how 90% of the software is apparently being stolen instead of paid for.
Where does the money come from for those taxes? From businesses paying for the software. The point Joe is making is that there's at least some offset here. Businesses that don't spend the money on software can reinvest it in their own businesses -- which could be better for the economy than letting the government invest it.
Then you insuate some sort of conflict of interest with your report that the Commerce Dept. actually hired someone with qualifications to be Undersecretary of Technology. The BSA operates much like a political organization; it seems to me that a VP from there would be ideal for a gov't position.
The BSA has a history of taking a very one-sided viewpoint. It's a lobbying organization, and so the worry here is that this guy doesn't bring "the best interests of the people" to the job, but the best interests of the software industry.
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Re: by Mike
Americans are way too polite and accepting of business to government relations. Up here, a political candidate lost her election after the scandal broke out that she was hosting a fund raising dinner with entertainment lobbyists as guests. I know, I know, your Repubs will tell you Canadians are a bunch of crazy socialists, but from up here it sure looks like America is fast becoming a corporate sponsored police state.
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Reinvestment
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90% of software being stolen
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Could you please add paragraph breaks to your post
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Not everybody can pay $200 for an operating system.
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