Culture as an Anarchy

I completely disagree with this article. None of those big companies are losing money, especially Microsoft. For example, when buying a new computer the chances are it automatically includes some kind of version of Windows. That means that whoever your processing computer manufacturer is, it has paid Microsoft the licensing fee already. Unfortunately, you are not even given an option of purchasing a computer without an Operating System, well most of the times. So if you decide to use an alternative OperatingSystem (like Linux or Solaris - distributed for free and having the same capabilities as Windows) Microsoft is getting paid anyways although you are not even using their product.

Piracy takes many different forms. Any time you physically copy something without a license it's piracy. People are distributing all kinds of software - not only music but programs like microsoft OS's like
XP and Vista, microsoft office, photoshop, etc. These programs are hundreds of dollars each. Compared to only 15$/cd, Microsoft and other software manufacturers are getting cheated out of enormous sums of money. I think even though Microsoft is losing profit due to the black market, they should make their products more affordable. Not every has hundred and hundreds of dollar to spend. Plus majority of the people who want to use Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc, are majority of students.

I found this article very interesting. I am not surprised the India has a wide variety of black markets. I think they should. I personally think this piracy is not that big of a deal. People are stilling buying computers and but are buying cheaper priced programs.