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 ? )

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.

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.

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.