greenleaves - 7:27 pm on Oct 4, 2006 (gmt 0)

If you add up all the dollars MS spends on preventing piracy and the loss of earnings from pirated software then you can get an idea of how much cheaper MS software would be if people didn't pirate it so often.

'Common. The numbers both the music and software industry publish as to how much they loose are REDICULOUS to say the least.

There is an old saying "statistics lie, and liars use statistics"

Do you know how they get those numbers? They add up all the value of all the pirated software and then claim that is what they are loosing. The fact is 97% of all copied software/music (much from 3rd world countries where the annual per capita is similar to the price of a new version of windows) would not have bought the software if they couldn't get a pirate version.

I am not saying it is ok to steal. What I am saying is that if Microsoft concentrated on producing a better product, instead of putting their efforts into anti-piracy features which will be defeated in a quarter of a second, they would do better.

I know many people that don't use Microsoft, and if they felt M$ produced a better product, they would probably buy.

I know a lot of people who use pirated software and no matter what the efforts by Microsoft, they will always use pirated software.

And I also know a lot of people with legitimate software that are being harassed with little to no support.

I am not saying it is ok to steal. I just feel this is a waste of money and resources that legitimate windows users end up paying to a Monopoly.

<controversial>Not to mention the hypocrisy of Microsoft (for people who know the companies less than squeaky clean history)</controversial>