Piracy in the Developing World

Although we've already discussed piracy in the developing world before, a recently written article by Nathan Spande follows the subject from a both similar, and different, angles.

Spande argues that as pirated software more readily avaiable in the developing world, more users will be using 'dirty' versions of MS Office than not. In a place like China then, where millions of users have relatively high-speed internet access, there is a potential for the majority of theses users to be utilizing pirated software on a large network. The security risk is obvious - flood the 'black' and 'grey' markets with Malware and BOOM!, you've got a huge problem on your hands.

What is there to do then? Spande offers numerous ideas, such as using open-source software, but finds that they all leave an inadequacy. MS Office and its similar software counterparts and standards for business computing, and as such, must be know for someone to compete in the job market. As such, the most viable option is to force down-pricing of the content, an unlikely event indeed.