Turning Chinese Piracy Into Revenue 170
itwbennett writes "Weak penalties and a lack of enforcement have made China a hotspot for software piracy, but it is possible to turn some pirated software into sales, says Vic DeMarines, vice president of products for V.i. Labs, a company that helps makers of engineering and design software track the unlicensed use of their products. Forty of V.i. Labs' clients use code to track when an installed application shows signs it's a pirated copy. The data collected makes a record of what organizations in China are using unlicensed copies across how many different PCs. They can then use the data to reach out to those organizations, who might not be aware they are using unlicensed software. 'We think that's a better way to reduce piracy overall,' says DeMarines. 'You need to target the organizations that should have the ability to pay license versus going after individual users or the people who crack the software.'"
Re:"Reach Out" (Score:4, Informative)
If you're profiting, you need to pay for the tools and software you use in your work
And keep every receipt (dated receipts - undated ones don't count) for every piece of software you possess, along with records on each individual computer linking that particular license to that particular receipt.
Once you've done that, you're ready to start getting ready for the BSA.
Re:The best thing against piracy is: (Score:4, Informative)
No, no it is not. Legitimate DVDs/software released are almost impossible to find in China, just because bootleg DVDs are selling for around sixty cents. The various sellers reduced the cost of them greatly for the Chinese market, for less than $5 (often with a few ads in front), but they're only available in the Potemkin downtown stores made to impress foreigners (every major Chinese city has a Potemkin downtown to impress foreigners).
Recently, even bootleg DVD sales have been hurting, because sixty cents for a disk is too much. People prefer free downloads. When quality DVDs are available on the street corner in front of your house for sixty cents, displayed in attractive packaging, and people still don't want to pay that much, obviously there isn't a mentality of paying for software because you "like" the company. There's a mentality that it would be stupid to waste the money when you can get a free version that's just as good.
By the way, these sixty cent DVDs are either straightforward copies of the legitimate DVD but with added subtitles, or maybe they'll contain a complete season of a TV show on just a few disks. Quality is great, and even street sellers will accept returns with no questions asked if there is a problem with it not playing or the quality is unacceptable for whatever reason.
Talk bad about MS and vista, but a great case study in how little software is actually bought is Windows Vista, which after a huge marketing campaign sold 244 copies. [newlaunches.com] Sure Vista sucked, but it was good enough that everybody still installed it. Linux and Mac are basically unused in China. Every single computer is running Windows.