Bid To Reduce Pirated Software In Thailand

[bitterbatter]

It is ridiculous how these companies will spout off figures of billions of dollars in 'lost' revenue. Maybe 2% of Thais could afford the software they have. Its like these cry baby media moguls who talk about how much they are losing for pirated movies and music, while both industries are recording all time high profits.

I tried to join Adobe Creative Cloud, which is the smartest thing Adobe has done making ridiculously overpriced software available at a monthly fee. So when I tried to sign up, I was not accepted because they won't sell in Thailand. So Thailand does a weak attempt at stopping shops from selling CD's containing torrented software, to try and gain corporate trust. The situation is so ridiculous sometimes.

I will never forget once I was at the immigration office in Chiang Mai. They have a big flat screen used for queuing people waiting. The screen showed a computer's desktop and I noticed that there was an icon for utorrent! I wouldn't be surprised if university students studying IT have classes on how to torrent.

[draftvader]

Haha, love this:

"the department also plans to ask Microsoft to reduce the cost of Microsoft Office software to government agencies by up to 80 per cent so that the government can have a budget for purchase of legal software"

-because, right now the government are using pirated copies?

They are. Most if not all public schools use pirated copies. I was told (by a person selling IT equipment to schools) that the government has a special 'arrangement' with MS so that MS never checks in on or had public schools raided. However, they do raid private institutions (you know, those nasty competitors that actually try to teach students?) and this is why more and more private institutions are switching to Apple macs, as the macs come with original OS and apps for basic stuff. Also most students (and other people) wouldn't know how or where to get pirated mac games nor would they be able to install/run these and this is good for the computer admins who need to keep the computers clean.

I hate to say it, as a PC man, but this is very wise. I have never come across decent IT infrastructure management in Thailand and most IT "experts" (i.e. the ones that aren't good enough to work internationally or become hackers) are severely lacking in knowledge. Every desktop I have come into contact with has so many "social" tools, downloaders and the like onboard that I fear to use them for anything other than playing Solitaire! The Mac solution might be more expensive at first, but I feel that their investment will still be working properly in 3-5 years time.