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$18,048,000 Bill for China

Apparently Microsoft is being accused of abuse in China because it is cracking down on illegal copies of its software. [1]

One excerpt from the article sums up the mentality in China:

More than 80% of the 60,000 Internet users participating in an online survey conducted by Tencent, one of the largest Internet service portals in China, protested the campaign. They complained that it was the high price of a legitimate copy of XP that had forced them to turn to counterfeits. A genuine copy of XP Pro is priced at $376 (2,578 yuan) in the Chinese market.

So if you don't like the price of candy at the local grocery store, you should just steal it. Why should you pay their fair market price when you could just take it and then claim that they forced you to steal it.

China is the single largest offender of global information espionage and currency manipulation. On all of the computer systems that I monitor daily, the vast majority of elicit hacker activity originates from IP addresses in China. Never once have I ever received any response from any complaint that I have filed at a Chinese ISP.

Since China is a communist regime, Microsoft has a legitimate complaint against the government. China has allowed its people to illegally acquire Microsoft's products without any reprocussions, therefore China is subsidizing the cost of said software for its citizens. In short, China owes Microsoft the $376 per copy of illegally installed software, which comes out to $18,048,000 (48,000 users x $376).

A Chinese attorney is quoted in the article asking for $1 Billion in fines for Microsoft. To that, I say, okay. After China pays Microsoft $105,280,000,000 for lost revenue to software piracy. That's assuming 20% of the country are using computers that are running Windows illegally. Even if only 80% of those 20% are illegal, then the fine owed to Microsoft would be $84,224,000,000. I'd be happy to pay $1 Billion to make $84 Billion.

[1] http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/ "Microsoft Hacking Computer in China"

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