Personally I think piracy is wrong and all that. But I detest that mentality which takes a holier-than-thou attitude about piracy and third-world countries which I read a lot about.

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Nobody has ever analysed why software piracy ever takes place. They assume that it's a criminal activity and don't want to analyse the issue.

So why does piracy even take place in third-world countries, folks?

Software is so highly priced that I cannot today buy all the software I need and still buy food and clothing. Really! I'm not kidding.

Corporates like Microsoft simply convert dollars into rupees and then complain about piracy being rampant in India and SE Asian countries like Korea.

What else can they expect when they overprice their products so that the common man has no option but to copy and pirate software? With computer hardware prices falling so much these days, the problem of piracy is only going to increase. Who wants to pay for software? Not me! Especially when it's for personal, non-profit use.

That's why I use Linux as much as I can so that I can neither pirate nor have to shell out tens of thousands of rupees on highly overpriced proprietary software.

But not everyone wants Linux! So the only solution to the problem of piracy is to reduce software prices to meet the economic situation in each and every country.

For example if they priced the next version of MS Windows at Rs. 500 and MS Office at Rs. 1500 or so, then the number of users having copies of legal software would go up a hundred-fold. No doubt of it. Not all of us are criminals here!

Instead, they price MS Windows at about Rs. 3000 or 4000 and MS Office at about Rs. 15000. Who would buy it in India? Mostly nobody.

So before blaming the third-world countries for piracy, the global software companies have better rethink their strategies for pricing software in different countries.
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Note: I love LaTeX! It's so much better than using a word processor and guess what! It's free!!!

rant successful!

There's no way Microsoft could do that. If they did, everyone in Europe and America would buy boxed sets of software from India instead of shelling out for products at 'standard' prices. (Newsflash - even we rich buggers in England think Windows is overpriced ). Unless they only provided documentation in [insert Indian language of choice here - pardon my ignorance!].

What am I talking about? Documentation from Microsoft? Wouldn't that constitute something like value for money?

Yeesh.

There are other ways of dealing with that problem. Impose higher duties on such articles. But I don't think people will come all the way from US or Europe just to buy MS products from India

Well if you can buy hardware at say INR 30000, you can might as well be ready to buy the OS for it ... which as per your estimates is just above 10% of the lowest hardware prices... why go ahead and buy bootlegged copies.

The hardware prices too are just USD - INR converted prices. No one complains about that. Why software then?

Even if MS Windows was available at your estimated price of INR 500, I am sure if the bootlegged version is available at INR 50, the incorrigibles wil opt for the lower priced option. I am not referring just to India but other places too where piracy is rampant.

If you want to use commercial software, pay up. How many have actually paid to use WinZip / WinRAR... Mind you, it is not free beyond the test period.

So piracy is not because the cost of the software is high. People simply don't want to pay for it.

This trend is not just with individuals but profitmaking enterprises too.

Well, my point is that I am not defending piracy.

But the people's mentality is like that. I can SEE hardware. It is something solid and physical. Therefore people don't mind paying for it. However software is something different. I cannot see it or assess it before I buy it (and I'm not talking about shareware here).

OK I don't mind buying the OS! But how much can I achieve with a computer that just has the OS installed on it? Nothing much. I need additional software and that's where I feel the pinch when I'm forced to have to buy it.
Plain wrong. We don't import hardware from the US. We get them cheap from Taiwan and Korea.
Yes, profitmaking enterprises do cheat and that's really bad. I'm not excusing that at all.

When I said you, I was not pointing to you, Ravishankar. I was making a generic use of the word "you".

True, it is imported from FarEast ... perhaps TWD-INR and KRW-INR -- but then again the USD-INR conversion stays - INR-USD-TWD and INR-USD-KRW - get the point?

But since the manufacturing costs are so low, they are pricing their products aggressively. That's what I meant. There is intense competition in the hardware market. Unfortunately not so much in the software market.

Example 1: Most people don't know that a free alternative exists to MS Office, i.e. OpenOffice.
Example 2: Most people aren't willing to look beyond Windows as their OS of choice.

If the above two things change, then I'm sure a lot less people will copy illegal software when they know that they can copy software legally (viz. GNU GPLed and LGPLed software).

"Example 1: Most people don't know that a free alternative exists to MS Office, i.e. OpenOffice."

While I agree that more people should be aware of the free alternatives (Sourceforge is not just for Linux), there is another problem. I can't say if this applies in other countries, but in the US most people have the opinion that if something is free then it must not be that good...if it were worth paying for then the developer would be charging for it. They see a direct connection between price and worth, and would rather pirate a commercial product than consider trying something free. This is a much larger hole to fill than simply letting people know that free alternatives exist.

capitalism sucks - full stop

pityfully limited resources + greedy bastards will enforce capitalism.

Pleads to M$ are about as useful as piles.

Use Linux as you say you do. Only way to kick M$ in their corporate nuts. Now if all indians and chinese use Linux, M$ will change. Two billion people ..

In Germany what is free is good. Mean bastards the lot. Hence the success of opensource there.

I am German.. btw.

Now hands off my wallet.

I suppose that's why the Americans have this saying:
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Well, all I can say is I've had plenty of free lunches in my time and they all taste good.

By the way, somebody mentioned WinZip here. There is a great, free, no-nag-screen alternative to WinZip. It's called FilZip and it's available here at www.filzip.com.

So WinZip cannot complain about declining sales. After all who would pay and use WinZip when you can get FilZip for free!

A little perspective, please. Food and clothing are needs -- software is not. Your basic complaint essentially is "The software I want to buy costs more than I want to have to pay for it."

The solution to this situation is one you have already found -- just use an alternative. -- J.W.

I would like to mention (especially to all the people who tend to turn the discussions into a yet another MS bashing session) that no matter what the price is people tend to always complain software is too expensive. Games for example have only gotten lower in prices and people still whine they are too expensive to buy even at $40 a game and use that to justify pirating.