Existence of linux many people swear by linux and claim that it’s way better than windows, i’ve never used linux but considering that microsoft gave in on the cloud market and uses linux to run azure I think it’s pretty safe to assume that linux is quite good even if linux is only 70 or 80 as good as windows when you consider that linux is free linux blows windows out of the Water if microsoft didn’t make it easy to get away with pirating windows the first thing users would have done is go with Linux today android has a 95 market share in india and I suspect that linux would hold a very similar market share today across developing countries, if windows was hard to pirate aside from deterring customers from going to the current competition companies are able to prevent new competition from springing up altogether take adobe for example their creative software suite is arguably the best on the market but it’s also quite expensive this creates a great opportunity for potential competitors to make a second grade product that’s substantially cheaper however given the relative ease of powering adobe software very few consumers would consider it anything else you either pirate premiere pro or you pay for it there is no middle ground apple has been able to carve out a decent market share for themselves with the final cut pro thanks to their loyal fan base and tailored software but everyone else like sony vegas basically got cut out and that brings us to the final reason that some companies tolerate piracy which is alternate modes of monetization as the internet and technology continue to advance we see more and more creative methods to monetize users I mean just take a look at google and facebook all the services they offer are free to the end user yet they’re both trillion dollar companies just because someone didn’t pay to use windows don’t mean that microsoft can’t make any money from that user microsoft doesn’t sell user data but they do leverage user data for targeted advertising which of course makes the Money at the end of the day pirating is a crime and you should not do it with that being said though companies realize that there will always be a market that’s looking to get software for free some companies block out this market by making it nearly impossible to pirate their software this makes sense for commercial projects that is mainly used by corporations and institutions when it comes to consumer products however tolerating piracy is often beneficial for the company long term tolerating piracy allows for software to be exposed around the world and it makes it extremely difficult for competitors to carve out market share hopefully these pirates eventually turn into paying customers but even if they don’t companies have figured out several alternative methods to monetize these users and to minimize losses now.again none of this gives you a free pass to pirate software but this is why some companies tolerate pirating.

why you’re not a genius for pirating software the ease was by designhave you ever felt smug after pirating a piece of software of course you know that you shouldn’t be pirating and you might even partially feel bad about doing it but at the same time you were able to get one over on industry giants like microsoft and adobe who have tens of thousands of employees trying to stop you or do they companies obviously do not want you to pirate their software and I’m not endorsing piracy by any means but with that being said most companies don’t actually make it that difficult to pirate their software, in fact, the reason you were able to get your hands on a pirated piece of software likely has less to do with the talent of the hacker you got it from and more to do with the company letting you get away with it and here’s why before we jump into why many companies turn a blind eye to piracy let’s take look at how easy it would be for companies to make their software nearly impossible to crack one of the easiest ways companies can prevent piracy is by making their software critically reliant on their own servers take a look at something like clash royale or fortnite these games are free so there’s no reason to pirate them but even if they cost money pirating the software itself would basically be useless you won’t be able to play these games without accessing the company servers and it’s basically impossible to access their servers without a legitimate copy of the game anothe example of this is streaming services like netflix and disney plus downloading the netflix or disney plus app is not going to let you access any of their content now of course I’m sure there are crazy hackers around the world who have managed to get past these servers but these work rounds have never become popular online because the second it does the companies will patch it another simple way companies can shut down piracy is through encryption and tamper proofing tamper proof software will instantly shut down and stop working the second that the source code is modified companies can throw on some encryption on top of this to make it extremely difficult for hackers to even decrypt what is written in the source code let’s say a hacker spent six months decrypting the software and then working around the tamper tamper-proofing the second the hacker shares it online the company can look at how the hacker worked around the system after that they can switch encryption protocols and patch the crack basically overnight it would take them a week at max to raise 6 months of the hacker’s work at this point the hacker is just helping the company improve its security protocol for free as you can see it’s not that hard for companies to make their software nearly Impenetrable and many of the biggest companies around us do exactly this when was the last time you heard of someone pirating ios or the bloomberg terminal or autocad or blackrock’s aladdin when was the last time the iphone’s passcode lock was cracked I mean it literally took the fbi themselves 13 years to crack the iphone passcode lock they did eventually get it though so I’m not saying that it’s impossible but companies can easily make it nearly impossible and many companies Do yet 91 percent of pcs sold in india run on a pirated copy of windows 10 and 58 of all photoshop users use pirated software so what’s up with this well the first reason many companies turn a blind eye to piracy is that they treat it like a low-cost investment when bill gates was asked about his thoughts on piracy he responded to the prevalence of piracy was terrible but at the same time he also said that tolerating piracy turned out to be microsoft’s best long-term strategy here’s the thing whenever someone pirates a piece of software they get used to the software whether that be photoshop or microsoft office they might use the pirated software for years but eventually there will come a time that the company comes out with a new version of the software at this point, the pirate has become pretty accustomed to the software and it’s safe to assume that they desire the new version of the software they have the option to power the new version or they can buy the real thing 95 of these users will likely just pirate the software once again but a solid few percent will buy it the second time around maybe they got value from the software and they feel morally obligated to pay for it or maybe they’re just tired of dealing with all the bugs associated with the pirated software whatever the reason a small portion of these users will become paid users with every software cycle and while it’s not a fast process when you’re dealing with billions of people and decades of time it doesn’t add up take india for example currently there are 845 million internet users in india if we assume that half of these users access the internet using windows we get 420 million people given that 91 of these users have a pirated version of windows we’re dealing with about 380 million people even if just two percent of these users convert to legal users that’s 7.6 million additional users if microsoft releases to windows versions per decade we’re looking at 15.2 million new customers every decade something else to consider is that the main reason people pirate software is because they can’t afford it in the us the piracy rate is only 19 which is a far cry from the 91 in india but when you think about it it’s way easier for americans to pirate software they’re generally more familiar with computers they have better internet access and they have more resources yet most americans do not pirate software because they see it as more of a hassle as opposed to a way to save money when you’re spending thousands of hours on your computer every year it makes sense to spend some extra cash and secure a legitimate version of windows unfortunately most people in india and china does not currently have the luxury of doing this but this will change as these countries transition from being emerging countries to being developed countries there will be an influx of people buying legitimate software in other words the percentage of pirates who transition to being paying users won’t stay at two percent forever it’ll become five 10 15 and the piracy rates in these countries will eventually reach levels similar to the us at that point microsoft and adobe and all the companies that use this strategy would literally capture billions of customers who would have otherwise never even tried the software and I think bill gates say it best as long as they’re going to steal it we want them to steal

Ours i sort of get addicted and then we somehow figure out how to how to collect sometime in the next in the next decade so you know it’s a great great place to be involved in now this strategy does not work for every company or every product and that’s why some companies prefer to keep their software difficult to pirate for example the bloomberg terminal costs two thousand dollars per month letting people who pass the terminal isn’t going to do bloomberg any good as basically none of the pirates will ever become legitimate users at those prices similarly apple makes money by selling iphones not selling ios if they let people easily get their hands on ios more people may become addicted to ios and end up buying an iphone but this would also make the ios experience not unique and tailored to iphones which would go against apple’s branding so apple usually tends to regulate piracy quite strictly anyway the other reason that some companies take it easy on pirates are the market share at the end of the day even if a pirate doesn’t translate to a paying user that pirate is still one less user that your competitor does not have in the case of microsoft minimizing the number of people using the competition was particularly important due to the .