If You're Going To Steal Software, Steal From Us: Microsoft Exec

[Admiral]

If you're going to be a software counterfeiter, then please copy and illegally use Microsoft products.

The above plea isn't from a posting on a hacker forum. Rather, it's how Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes feels about software counterfeiters. "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else," Raikes said.

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Actually, I remember Bill Gates saying that first:

"As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

-- Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corp, 1998.

[Jammrock]

How funny. And how true.

[ZokesPro]

If they want us to steal their software then why don't they make it easier for us to steal and let us do updates then!

[Jessterw]

That's the point, they did make it easy and now they're collecting

[TnT]

I've always said that software piracy does nothing except ingrain the major software companies. It keeps people from looking at alternatives and keeps "industry standard" software at the front. Kids that warez software get comfortable with that software and when they become professionals their companies use what their employees are skilled at using.

Same goes for music and movies as well. Instead of checking out indie movies or indie bands, people pirate the mainstream which help keep the big studio's and celebrity's names at the top.