China Jails Four For Microsoft XP Piracy 164
adeelarshad82 writes "Chinese court has jailed four people for spreading their bootleg 'Tomato Garden' version of Microsoft's Windows XP program, in what the Xinhua news agency called the nation's biggest software piracy case. One of the four men Hong Lei, the creator of the downloadable 'Tomato Garden Windows XP' software, was jailed for three and a half years by a court in Suzhou in eastern China, Xinhua."
Re:interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Use Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
well said- MS may be hurting its self big time by cracking down on the pirates- its probably the easiest way they could have created an MS centric Chinese software market. Now people have a better reason to use FOSS based OSes than under a Chinese Windows pirating culture.
Re:Because they're about to start writing software (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't think China needed a legal reason to do whatever it wants outside of its borders... especially if it indeed does become the dominant economy on the planet... presumably that entails the strongest military and really if they wanted to invade some country at that point there probably wouldn't be much the world would do about it.
Business feasibility (Score:5, Interesting)
He is very matter of fact about it. You build into your budget, the kickback amounts.
I have thought about this a bit, and the attutide is somewhat akin to the tipping/no tipping cultures. I spent time in the US and once I accepted tipping I saw it was a better system. Without kickbacks/bribes you just cannot operate as a foreign company. A kickback is almost regarded as a tip in China.
Re:Use Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
I am unsure how much MS wants this crackdown. I think the government wants to clean up the piracy, because they can see clearly how invasive and pervasive Windows is. Red Flag Linux is the official operating system of Red Flagged China.
And, the crackdown WILL benefit China. No money being sent to the western Capitalist Pigs, for starters - not even for legal copies. People who are forced away from MS holding their hands (Hail, Clippy!) will be forced to learn how an operating system works - thereby creating more potential hackers to attack the Pentagon. China gains in their own security - there just aren't a lot of virus and trojan infections running on Linux.
Gates is on record, favoring piracy of MS Products over legal acquisitions of *nix: http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9 [latimes.com]
Re:Sounds Good (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, I do wonder, given the nature and history of piracy in China, if this action of China is truly due to justice? or is it some personal jealousy political revenge thing?
srsly (Score:5, Interesting)
so making MONEY from setting up a business distributing copies of XP you altered intentionally and distribute to millions gets your 3 1/2 years but downloading a few songs for personal use gets you whacked with millions in damages which will cripple your life?
Re:Big nothing. (Score:1, Interesting)
Sounds nicer than the copy most of the world pays for. Considering I've seen "Activation" shut down a small business who was using Windows 2003 legitimately before, I'd say it sounds a lot less like running your business on a minefield than with the usual copy of Windows...
Re:Big nothing. (Score:4, Interesting)
On top of that, China in my opinion has a terrible reputation for allowing these things to happen and turning a blind eye.
Hey, when per capita yearly income is in the US$100s, how much demand do think there is for Microsoft Windows (or anything else) at a substantial percentage of that?
Sentencing these people to a few years jail time signals to others that they can't be quite so blatant about their piracy anymore, as China is changing their stance on it.
It's a slap on the wrist and probably the result of some kind of deal.
When I worked for Turbolinux in the early 2000s we sold to 3 markets - Japan, China and the US. In Japan we were #1 for awhile due to all the proprietary goodies we could attach to the system. China was #2 and US was #3. I don't think Turbo ever turned a profit in the US.
I spent a week in 2001 in Beijing with the Chinese office as we were working on getting the price point below US$10 per retail sale. That's still rather expensive.
My piracy story (Score:1, Interesting)
I was fully prepared to pay retail price for XP, but none of the local stores (Best Buy, Staples, Microcenter) offered it for sale. Perhaps we could have found it on line somewhere - I didn't do an exhaustive investigation - but a cursory search didn't show anything promising from a retailer whose name I recognized. And I didn't feel comfortable shelling out money to someone I've never heard of, especially when it comes to something intangible like software of unknown origin.
I got more and more irritated and finally went to PirateBay. I found a version with the annoying activation stripped out (I think it was called "The Pirate Edition" or something), reviewed the comments to see other people's experience, and based on them took a leap of faith hoping there were no embedded trojans. We downloaded it and a couple of hours later had a perfectly working XP (with a pirate-themed background, that he thought was neat but I had him change).
I don't know what the moral is here. I felt bad about doing this, but I was just frustrated and fed up with not being able to buy a retail version from a trusted store. All I'm doing is relating what I did. Judge the ethics of it however you want.
I suppose I could have used Linux with WINE but my experience with WINE hasn't been perfect. Perhaps I would do that if it was for myself. Some programs work great with it, but others don't, and I just didn't want to deal with my son's inevitable complaints that this or that doesn't work right. I just wanted something that would work and I could forget about it.
Re:Sounds Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone in Taiwan who's familiar with such things said criminal accusations are inherently political. Pretty much all politicians are corrupt and The Party controls the courts. Best way to get rid of a rival is to denounce them for corruption. Interestingly it's not the verdict of the court case that shows they are finished, the fact that the case was not blocked is enough. Actually if you can even read about a potential case you know they are finished, because if they had a chance the coverage would have been censored. E.g. Li Peng
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Peng#Alleged_Corruption [wikipedia.org]
As the findings of the investigation leaked to the general Chinese public, the Chinese government took an unexpected stand. As victims (including some influential social citizens of Beijing) of New Nation Great Co. angrily demonstrated outside the Zhongnanhai more than a dozen times, hold up the banners that claim "Li Peng return the money to us from your son", none of the demonstrations were dispersed and none of the demonstrators were arrested. Each time, the Chinese government only sent police to watch the demonstrators and did nothing else. As the information of the investigation was leaked and circulated on the Internet, it was not immediately censored; instead, it was allowed to circulate for quite some time before the eventual ban, and none of the domestic Chinese Web sites that published the info were shut down by the Chinese governmental censorship. However, the Chinese government did not respond to the victims' and public demands either. China analysts postulate such an unusual move by the Chinese government served several purposes, including pressuring Li Peng to retire from his post of chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress when he reached the age limit, as well as putting a distance between Li Peng and the government itself for the future leadership. Whatever the reason, the investigation results concerning corruption charges of Li Peng's family that leaked to the public, was tolerated by the Chinese government for a short period of time, and certainly made Li Peng and his family become more unpopular than ever among the general Chinese populace.
Re:Sounds Good (Score:3, Interesting)
Jailing people due to copyright infringement is never due to justice. I'd guess they stepped on the wrong toes, forgot to bribe the wrong official.
Re:Sounds Good (Score:3, Interesting)
These men are probably "being mad examples of" scapegoats if you will. Yes, they're probably guilty, but it's just a drop in the bucket from what I've read. The Chinese government just wants to look like it's doing something about piracy.