"branded goods bought in one country are sold elsewhere at a marked-down price."

Isn't that the basis of profitable commerce? Buy low, sell higher?

Quote:Authorities say the software is worth an estimated $900 million.

Does anyone else feel, they should have said: " Would have sold for . . " ?

How does one measure the worth of software ?

Is it justified to subtract , say 1% of it's price, for every BSOD ?

If so, there isn't any loss, is there ?

( I hate penguins, can I have a BSD-Daemon icon ? )

hardly. i'm not the one with the furniture fetish and anger management issues ("Ballmer who? i know not of whom you speak...").

if they want to check, they can come on over with a court order/search warrant, and i'll show all my legit licenses for the software i don't run anymore (switched to UNIX/Mac/Linux).

the BSA is just a bunch of rented thugs for the MS legal team. i fail to see how piracy of licensed software is a crime against humanity, when it is really nothing but simple, petty theft.

Microsoft software is worth money? You could have fooled me!!

In this instance knowing the difference between value, cost and worth would have been very interesting. Unlike a great deal of pirated IP, where the value in lost revenue to the owner is very low - because it rarely displaces a legitimate sale - this operation clearly did displace a great many legitimate sales of MS products. It wasn't piracy, it was forgery. End users, and it seems at least some of the middlemen, thought they were buying the real thing. But clearly there must have been a discounted price to attract sales away from the legitimate channel.

Piracy doesn't go to the trouble of printing copies of the boxes, faking the holograms, etc etc. It is usually found for a few dollars on a writeable CD at some market stall.

So, there is a very interesting set of questions unanswered in the bland statement of the software's worth. How much money did these guys manage to sell the forgeries for, and what reasonable estimate of lost legitimate sales did MS suffer?

If these guys managed to pocket even a small fraction of the $900M retail value, four years in pokey is a very small price for such riches. Indeed merely a part of the price of doing business. I wonder how many readers would be prepared to do a small stretch if paid, say, a million pounds a year for doing so.

There are lies , damned lies and statistics

What price a number plucked from the air ?

Paris because she is good with playing the numbers game !

Why is it that every time they comment on piracy, the authorities feel the need to remind us that "Piracy is a crime, pure and simple"? You don't get "Rape is a crime, pure and simple"...

No - see - you don't understand.

In a mercantile economy the corporate is welcome to set prices where and how it likes with the full support of its local government (nowdays that's mainly the US but various European nations stick their oar in depending on the product). That local government(or alliance) then exerts pressure on smaller governments (do what we say or else we wont trade with you so you wont get any of our pie).

So it can sell cheap in China and Africa whilst charging High in Europe. Now if you try and sell from China to Europe at China prices - well that's just not on. The full force of the law is brought to close you down and arrest you.

However it's fine for that same company to put all their manufacturing in nations with cheap labour.

There is no Free Trade at the moment. Will free trade and old world capitalism return one day? Maybe... but not for a long time. It's funny to see us regress to a pre 1750 economic standing.

Ah, well. It's that lot in the renegade province again !! They should be taken out and shot for infiltrating the free world with such fascist software !!

"In a mercantile economy the corporate is welcome to set prices where and how it likes with the full support of its local government (nowdays that's mainly the US but various European nations stick their oar in depending on the product). That local government(or alliance) then exerts pressure on smaller governments (do what we say or else we wont trade with you so you wont get any of our pie).

So it can sell cheap in China and Africa whilst charging High in Europe. Now if you try and sell from China to Europe at China prices - well that's just not on. The full force of the law is brought to close you down and arrest you.

However it's fine for that same company to put all their manufacturing in nations with cheap labour.

There is no Free Trade at the moment. Will free trade and old world capitalism return one day? Maybe... but not for a long time. It's funny to see us regress to a pre 1750 economic standing."

Well bloody said that man/woman! The whole world is f*cked up. There's plenty of glossing over the issues, but they're there nonetheless. Authorities try to cover it up with scare mongering like "climate change", but the economic practices that go on are shameful for such an "advanced and civilised" world.

So you defraud to the amount of $900 million (or whatever, as per above..!) - and just get 4 years for it??

Presumably a suitable amount was siphoned off into hidden accounts/possessions, making this quite an easy bit of bird to do for the rewards IMO - certainly more lucrative than the Securitas thieves over here....

mmmmm Why can MS just charge say £100 for initlal purchase and say £25 per year after that, same as AV and just about everybody else does. That way they could build on the strengths and fix the weaknesses of the OS.

Why do we have to have a full new OS, and all the attentand heartache with upgrading and bugs every few years?

Oh and why the heck were AMD and Intel allowed to produce 64 bit CPU way before there was an operating system ready for them. And why the heck did AMD and Intel not kick the likes of MS in the balls and tell them to get it sorted before releasing the x64s?

> Oh and why the heck were AMD and Intel allowed to produce 64 bit

> CPU way before there was an operating system ready for them.

Where else would one test this 64 bit OS but on a consumer 64 bit chip?

FWIW, I was happy with all the OS's I put on my 64 bit chip.

Now IE's market share is going to slump to 10% of its former glory too.