Rampant Piracy on the Sea of Information - Part 2

So wondered where the other half of this article was last issue eh? Well it jumped right over to this issue! :D

Asia is left out

Maxis' flagship simulation, SimCity 3000, has a full-packed manual, complete with a reference card. Not only will you find the guidelines for the game, but poems, stories, views and sketches of cities around the world to complement the game and give your money's worth. Here comes the crunch and blow to your original investment, those only appear in the Western editions. In the Asian edition, the manual is edited and printed in Singapore and has been cut down and void of all the 'extras' that make the simulation experience more worthwhile.

Perhaps Electronic Arts' (wo bought out Maxis) mentality is that Asian players would not be interested in such extra highlights. So for about RM120 you get a brief manual and a coloured CD-ROM in a brown box with cardboard colour cover. Compare that with RM10 for a pirated version that comes with a coloured CD-ROM, manual reprinted in the jewel case and coloured cover both on front and back of the CD case and you decide. Feel cheated? What about software support? From a company based miles away on the other side of the Pacific? Not surprising locals prefer the option of pirated goods. Can you blame them?
Progress or digress?

Adobe Photoshop with its award winning tools and superb filters are out of the reach for a student. So are many other applications and utilities. Packages worth thousands may not be a problem to big corporations but what is the average user expected to do? Manage with sub-standard tools and cheap shareware programs? The IT culture and literacy rate depend highly on access to digital worlds. If not for the proliferation of illegal software being distributed, the geeks that the industry desperately seeks today would be scarce. Without illegal software would we have developed our IT driven society status? The sharing of knowledge, keeping information free (yeap, that's a HITB motto there!) and the exchange of data was what made the Internet and kept it in existence. Without this exchange, there would be no fancy World Wide Web for you to click through and surf. What? You thought all those fancy Flash discoveries you're looking at on those cool movie sites were started by rich corporations buying full-fledged suite software from some top-charging monolith software house? Heh, most of the discoveries were done by students using pirated copies of superb software that would otherwise cost them their whole study fee, just to explore the world of powerful software out of their monetary reach.

Let's not forget that in the ever-increasing Digital Divide charging such exorbitant prices on software will further push the chasm apart between the developed world and the rising one.

Corruption makes anti-piracy measures ineffective in this region. Right in our own Technology Park Malaysia (TPM) we have enterprises running illegal software businesses, which I shall not mention. Oho, you should know why or who those people are if you have contacts working in there :) Heh, if this article came out in a magazine you can bet the ISA would come pounding after me. So that's real funny eh? Multinational big-time companies in high-tech industry park get by without paying licenses, and on the other end big-time software companies are shouting for legalization? What gives? Corruption going on? Or some secret dealings between them eh? Corporations that have funds to allocate for purchasing original software choose instead to maximize income. Should it be said connections prevent them from being identified? Perhaps we are looking at the wrong target, choosing to go after the minority who are helpless while the dominants continue to rule.

Piracy is alive and will continue to do so in the years to come, when there is a demand, there will be a supply. The next time you spot a pirate on the sea of digital data look into the mirror, it could be you.

1.) The Return of the Shadow Legacy - druid
2.) Rampant Piracy on the Sea of Information - xearthed
3.) Napster, MPAA, AOL, and how stupid people in power will kill the first amendment - unfrgvnme
4.) Copyright Law - Aleanor
5.) Hacking vs Sysadmining - madirish
6.) State of the Hack Awards #4 - madsaxon
7.) Somethings Never Change - UberGeek
8.) It's Not about Change - darlene
9.) Programming your PSX (part 1) - OZONE