Could successful software anti piracy campaigns in China and India spawn new Server Based Computing development?
An AP wire service article posted on Wired.com gave me pause to ponder.
India is also recognizing the constraints on software development imposed by piracy. The Times of India reports;Piracy Zaps China's Tech Industry
Associated Press 10:15 AM Jul, 02, 2006
BEIJING -- Kingsoft Corporation's English-Chinese dictionary program is used on most of China's 60 million PCs. That's the good news. The bad news: Kingsoft doesn't make any money from it, because 90 percent of those copies are pirated.
One by one, the Beijing-based software maker has seen its sales of such popular products destroyed after black market producers flooded the market with cheap copies.
Today, Kingsoft's 600 programmers focus on making what it hopes can't be copied -- online games and business and anti-virus programs that have to be linked to its own computers in order to function.
"Piracy has had a big impact on us, making it so we can't get powerful and compete with Microsoft," said Ren Jian, a former Microsoft manager who is Kingsoft's chief operating officer.
“Piracy eating into profits of IT firms”
by Sujata Dutta Sachdeva [ 1 Oct, 2006 0006 hrs ]
NEW DELHI: India's IT success makes great copy. Especially when it's about big players and the global footprints they have left behind.
But behind this happy picture lingers a dark side too. It involves small and medium companies, especially in the product development space. These firms are losing revenue because of piracy and weak enforcement of copyright laws in India.....
A recent study by Business Software Alliance (BSA)-IDC reveals piracy is as high as 72% in India. In fact, our software industry is losing around $566 m because of it. It's a growing problem among businesses internationally, but the good news is that it's coming down steadily in India over the last 10 years.
China's Linux Gamble
By Maria Trombly
September 5, 2005
On virtually any street in Shanghai or Beijing, you can buy a Hollywood DVD or hot new CD for $1 or less. Vendors peddle Microsoft Office, Windows XP, and every other popular software applications out of cardboard boxes jammed full of discs....
According to Jones Day intellectual property rights lawyer Xiang Wang, the Chinese case law on many aspects of intellectual property rights is not yet well developed, and cases can take years to settle. The Business Software Alliance a trade group including software giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and IBM alleges that 90 percent of all software used in China is pirated and that software vendors suffered $3.5 billion in losses last year due to Chinese piracy.
The Chinese government has started to realize that this is an obstacle to economic development. And if anybody pays attention to economic development these days, it's China. Now, China is beginning to look at open source software as a way out of the intellectual property quagmire that doesn't involve paying high costs.
Linux is a keystone in this strategy.
President Hu Jintao called attention to piracy's cost to China in a May 27 speech to Communist Party officials. Enforcement "is an urgent need for ... enhancing the country's core competitiveness," Hu said.
"We should strengthen our law enforcement and lawfully and severely crack down on and effectively curb law-breaking and criminal acts of violating intellectual property rights," he said.
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October 20, 2005 Update HeadlineLets assume that China, the number two PC market in the would, ships its' personal computer products with a legal copy of an operating system. Good. But what about applications?
MSNBC.MSN.COM has posted an Asscociated Press report;China jails 9 in anti-piracy crackdownUpdated: 7:56 a.m. ET Oct 20, 2006
Prison terms up to 13 years, fines for illegal movies, software
BEIJING - Nine people convicted of selling illegally copied DVDs and other goods have been jailed for up to 13 years in China's biggest anti-piracy crackdown to date, a news report said Friday.
The sentences were the longest reported since China stepped up penalties for product piracy in mid-2005, imposing jail time in addition to fines that Washington and other governments had complained were inadequate to stop the thriving underground industry.
End of Headline Update
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Kingsoft, the software maker, aspired to be the "Microsoft of China," but was forced by piracy to stop selling games, a media player and other mass-market programs. Ren, the COO, says the consumer logic is simple: A pirated copy of Kingsoft's Chinese-English dictionary costs one-tenth the $12 price of the real thing.
The onslaught has forced Kingsoft to narrow its product range, with two-thirds of its programmers now working on online role-playing games that players access on Kingsoft's computers for a monthly fee -- part of a thriving Chinese market for online games.
“Necessity is the Mother of Invention” quote has been attributed to Plato, De Vinci, Shakespeare and others. My favorite interpretation is “ Got lemons? Make lemonade!” As captain of your enterprise, do not sail into a nations waters known to have pirates unless the “IPR” (Intellectual Property Rights) coast guard is at sea on patrol. No Coast guard? Then take a land route. In this case Free Open Source Software (FOSS) or one of Server Based Computing offerings.
Microsoft has already in place SAAS (Software As A Service) with SPLA (Service Provider License Agreement).
The Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) enables service providers and ISVs with a hosted offering to license Microsoft products on a monthly basis to provide services and hosted applications to their end customers.
The personal computer has permitted the owner/operator to specify what applications are hosted on their machines. Before the Internet this was an uncomplicated procedure. What was on that machine had to be placed there by someone with direct access to that machine. With the Internet/Intranet that is no longer the case.
Organizations now have software distribution systems that will load software on a PC based on group membership. Enterprises that have a total commitment to respect IPR have teams that their primary role is to keep the organization with the limits of the law.
Knowledgeable individuals are forced to buy and install software whose sole purpose is to keep everyone else from loading software on to their personal computer. Your personal computer is no longer your personal computer if it connected to the Internet. Security is now a major concern for both the individual and organizations.
In the past, organizations have recognized that a combination of SBC hosted applications and local applications represent an effective compromise. Some enterprises, upon review, have concluded that increased use of Server Based Computing has additional merit. And it is not based solely on TCO, but includes security and the ability to rapidly deploy changing IT services to attain a competitive advantage. That review has not been done by most PC centric organizations and individuals. SBC has not reached out to the SME and individuals with quality information that invokes a review of their PC utilization.
Perhaps China and India, influenced by current conditions, can create a Server Based Computing environment for the retail consumer that is safe from pirates on the street and those pirates that roam the Internet.
Organizations now have software distribution systems that will load software on a PC based on group membership. Enterprises that have a total commitment to respect IPR have teams that their primary role is to keep the organization with the limits of the law.
Knowledgeable individuals are forced to buy and install software whose sole purpose is to keep everyone else from loading software on to their personal computer. Your personal computer is no longer your personal computer if it connected to the Internet. Security is now a major concern for both the individual and organizations.
In the past, organizations have recognized that a combination of SBC hosted applications and local applications represent an effective compromise. Some enterprises, upon review, have concluded that increased use of Server Based Computing has additional merit. And it is not based solely on TCO, but includes security and the ability to rapidly deploy changing IT services to attain a competitive advantage. That review has not been done by most PC centric organizations and individuals. SBC has not reached out to the SME and individuals with quality information that invokes a review of their PC utilization.
Perhaps China and India, influenced by current conditions, can create a Server Based Computing environment for the retail consumer that is safe from pirates on the street and those pirates that roam the Internet.
Until the next post,
Steve
