KL the least expensive city

TheStar coverage about Kuala Lumpur as the least expensive city.

This is probably the main catalyst behind the formation of Malaysia as one of the biggest pirated software haven in Asia.

But truth to be told, software piracy is still pretty much alive in Malaysia. You can almost find it easily at any I.T mall (which is getting popular) these days. Of course, this is good sign towards IT retailers, it means that people are starting to be more aware of using IT as the means of dealing with their daily life problems.

But pirated software vendors isn't up for a big risk as it may seems to be, in other words, they are not really afraid of being arrested and charged at court per se.

I do notice that they are probably afraid of Microsoft as an authority, other vendors such as Macromedia, Adobe, Oracle, Redhat and etc are no authority to them. My observation is simple, some of these software are available from the Internet and these so-called illegal traders are merely CDs sellers. They are selling CDs, not software. They are not the source of the illegal software copies. Even better, softwares were not printed with anti-piracy statement such as "if you have obtained this copy illegal, please call xxx-xxxx-xxxx". This is probably because many software vendors don't assigned local distributors to conquer the local market. Many would prefer to use Internet as the medium for distributing trial copies and etc. As a result of that, there is no local interest which would be erected by itself to fight against software piracy.

And also, I noticed that many of the software being exhibited are outdated. Many are more that 3 years old, I even noticed games which are 10 years old, which nobody would want to even look at it anymore. Thus, these illegal traders are also high-tech-antics-sellers or better known as software-historians.

Besides that, many software vendors don't even care about it because the sales of their softwares or the point of presence in the community is so negligible that it doesn't matter anyway; to have someone illegally using the software.

In conclusion, in the least expensive city of the world, people don't expect to pay more. Software piracy has to be dealt with through community maturity.

Comments

Brandon Teoh said…
Microsoft said "damn-right", it is about values.