What do you think about Napster?

[Undertoad]

Originally posted by tw
I fear you worry about something trivial as Napster. The real problem is international piracy - especially mainland China. The theft numbers there are phenomonally greater and up to now have not been addressed by an industry that was willing to accept this piracy.
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The industry remains all but ignorant to software piracy. Even all Chinese negotiators at a GATT hearing on pirated software had nothing but pirated software in their computers. Software piracy got too bad before the industry finally took notice.

Bill Gates addressed the piracy problem in China thusly:

"I don't care if they're pirating software, as long as it's Windows."

His theory was that there was no way to have China actually pay for software right now -- the legal mechanisms weren't in place. But someday there would be legal mechanisms, and by then, he hoped, they would be "locked in". And MS had enough money from SW sales everywhere else in the world, that the one-quarter of the world's population that is mainland China was not a concern to him.