02.15.09
Microsoft Promotes, Punishes So-called ‘Pirates’; Promotes Slavery and Public Looting
THIS POST binds together news reports from several days ago. Together, when laid in the correct sequence, these hopefully illustrate just how Microsoft is fooling the whole world, essentially abusing it while pretending to be a victim of the very same abuse that it promotes.
We start this post by looking at this excellent analysis from Sam Varghese in the Australian press. He does a good job at showing that Microsoft truthfully likes the notion of counterfeiting, which is conveniently labels “piracy” for dramatic effect.
Public memory has always been woefully short. With the advent and popularisation of the internet, it has become even shorter; people can only absorb information in dribs and drabs.
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Hence, when Microsoft talked about piracy recently, few, if any remembered, that the company’s own co-founder, Bill Gates, once admitted that he watched pirated movies on YouTube.
Gates has also, in the past, confirmed how important piracy is to Microsoft: “Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software… Someday they will, though. 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.”
More recently, we saw Microsoft sending those most valued distributors to prison. Suddenly it decided that it no longer wants to give people software free of charge and its attacks targeted the very same people whose activities it used to implicitly endorse. Here is a new story about Microsoft attacking one such distributor.
A computer shop in Cheltenham has been fined for selling PCs with pirated Microsoft products pre-installed.
The Computer Cellar, in Winchcombe Street, has paid an undisclosed sum in damages to the computer giant after investigators uncovered the piracy.
Microsoft has already been reported to the authorities (antitrust complaint) for this type of treatment which, at the end of the day, benefits Free software the most.
Here is another news article which accuses Microsoft of fighting against Chinese sellers whose work it once encouraged (see quote in the article from Sam Varghese) while at the same time embracing wage slavery and poor working conditions.
Microsoft defends sweatshop conditions in China
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Microsoft fends off bad factory conditions
A new report claims Redmond-based Microsoft is more concerned about its copyrights and piracy in China than the workers who make their products there.
The National Labor Committee spotlighted a factory in Dongguan City, China, that makes keyboards and other parts for Microsoft, as well as Dell, HP and others. It found the workers are being subjected to miserable conditions.
Among the findings: young workers sit on hard stools for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week – exceeding China’s legal limit.
They’re allowed one second to snap each key on a keyboard into place, performing the same operation a million times in a month. Each is paid a base wage of 61-cents an hour.
This bodes badly for Microsoft, which was accused by the India Daily of what it shrewdly called “cyber slavery under the American corporate banners.” They want cheap labour, which they can typically earn using political corruption. A state senator recently complained about this behaviour from Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4].
As we last emphasised some days ago, Microsoft pressured the United States government to take from the poor and give to giants like Microsoft, whose business is obviously suffering. Microsoft eventually got its way.
Microsoft Applauds the Senate Passage of the Economic Stimulus Bill
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From the earliest, planning, stages of the U.S. economic stimulus bill, Microsoft has indicated strong support for the initiative, arguing the critical necessity of the financial package. Last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer addressed the U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus Retreat, emphasizing yet again the need for the stimulus in order to sustain what the CEO referred to as the restart of the economic engine. On February 10, 2009, Fred Humphries, managing director, U.S. Government Affairs, Microsoft, applauded the Senate passage of the economic stimulus bill, and underlined that U.S. Congress needed to take critical steps to pass legislation that would jumpstart the economy, including handing out the necessary funds.
“Economic stimulus” is a very Orwellian term. It sounds as though it’s about recipients of wealth, which is it; but it’s the wealthy who receive this wealth, which the broad public is stimulated to supply for them.
What Microsoft asks for, Microsoft gets. But where is the resistance to this appalling act of theft from the public? It’s important to (re)check who runs this country. █
Renan said,
February 15, 2009 at 2:30 pm
“A new report claims Redmond-based Microsoft is more concerned about its copyrights and piracy in China than the workers who make their products there.”
Slight ironic how they are *INSANE* with their copyright paranoia, yet they don’t care about workers…
But this is capitalism, where workers are cheap, mass labour, which can be discarded as needed, where copyrights can go forever…