I hate to be one of those jerks from Oregon, but we don’t have a sales tax, nor a license to collect it.

How does this sound for a solution? Make the MAPS subscription contingent on you having a SBSC or other Certification? Even as writing this down, I can see bad things about this, but what else can be done?

Here are ideas I have thought about:
1. The open source movement has gotten people to legitimately think about free software. (Yes, I remember getting the Byte magazine with the viking ship on there with the floppy disk as the sail, talking about piracy, circa 1979…This is not new.) People generally will pay for what they use, but they don’t want to feel like idiot paying $1500 for an airline seat, sitting next to the guy that paid $299 on Priceline.

2. People want to “stick it to the man.” How many times have you heard that Bill Gates has enough money, and he can handle it? OK, on a world perspective, we (in the US) have enough money, so it is OK that people steal from us? That is the “when is stealing OK” question. See (pre 2003) Napster, Warez, Kazaa, etc. for that perspective.

3. With no punishment, there is no law. Unless the owners of copyrights call on authorities to enforce the law, then there is, by their inaction, no law. If anything, MS needs to look at the “family pack” concept of licensing, which lets up to 5 computers in the same house be loaded with OS software for $199. The Office License (for the most part, for personal use) let you do 3 computers, but it is not really advertised out there.

4. MS really needs to simplify licensing. Make a Visio flow chart or something. Are you a home user? Yes; this is what is available for you. Are you a student of a university? Yes; this is for you, but not for use in a business of any sort. Are you a legitimate MS Partner? Yes; this is what is available for you.

5. Make piracy more difficult. The movie industry thought that selling VCR tapes for $20 would kill them (back in 1982, when the Hollywood studios released movies on tape, they were $80 – $120 a pop. Blockbuster thanked them for that…). Now, they give us more value for the $20 DVD, that it makes more sense to get a really nice TV and a DVD player, and watch movies at home (plus, taking my 5 kids to the movies is prohibitively expensive…)

Man, even writing this is confusing… Anyway, I hope what I have said makes some sense, and thank you for reading it.

Also, thanks, Vlad, for all you do for the community.

Jeff

Give them a little credit guys.

-Vlad

Many partner programs with at least check your website and ask for a copy of your sales tax license to make sure you are in the IT business before they will give you a reseller’s discount on their product.

Why Microsoft does not do this is unfantomable. ARRRGGGH!

-Ken

I think the better option would be to track which license keys are given to which partners. When you find one of those licenses out in the wild, investigate the partner! That would definitely put a dent on piracy and help all of MS’ partners!

As for the other comments that bring up the point that MS should be checking companies that sign up for the action pack, I agree! I don’t think MS has the resources to do a check on every company that registers as a partner, but when a company buys the action pack, they should at least do a cursory check to ensure the company is really IT oriented and not a doctor’s office or some industrial factory, etc.

Arrrrgggg… Where’s my action pack!?

Good job Microsoft! I know its hard to please everyone but you’ve got to start somewhere and I want you guys that read Vlad’s blog to at least know it is appreciated.

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

I think not.

Software piracy (piracy in general) is a joke in the US economy. It happens in virtually EVERY business in one form or another and until the court systems start nailing the guilty parties with huge fines at least 10 times the value of the stolen software, it’s going to continue to grow wildly. How many of you readers that are screaming for MS’s help have pirated MP3s or 30 day shareware software you’ve been using for years on your hard drive? If you raised your hand, you too are one of those nasty pirates. Aye matey – me too.

As for setting up a partner verification process, how do propose it be done? Who’s going to foot the bill? I am not a Small Business guy so I don’t know the answer, but I do know that Microsoft’s other verification processes haven’t worked too well so far. How many complete idiots have you met that are MS certified whackos? (I mean, for those of you who really know Vlad…j/k)

Everything always comes down to the bottom line and in this case, Microsoft was getting paid from people who most likely aren’t willing to buy the freakin software any other way and were probably stealing it until now so how motivated do you think they are to shut down that revenue stream? I’m sure there are exceptions where legitimate customers got screwed, but from MS’s standpoint at least they’re getting some money from the illegal use of their software instead of being left out in the cold completely.

Before you start yelling that I am an idiot, I understand that this logic is WRONG in normal business practice, but it does seem to make a little sense in the reality of this situation.