37 ms·
Russia to legalize software piracy
- advael 5y agoLook I know what you're all thinking, but we shouldn't let this one good decision trick us into supporting the current Russian regime
- steve76 5y ago
- mcv 5y agoConsidering a legislator in the US proposed to legalise real piracy (against Russian oligarchs), I actually find this proposal rather mild.
- pwdisswordfish9 5y agoWait, it was illegal in Russia before?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwmeariver1 5y agoIt was illegal but nothing ever got enforced out of my own experience.
- akho 5y agoIt was enforced for businesses. I don’t think it’s enforced for private users anywhere.
- Gigachad 5y agoMost countries go after distribution which has been somewhat successful.
- 5560675260 5y agoIt was enforced selectively (as many laws there) with occasional arrests of freelance computer technicians. They would be asked to do a minor repair and then install pirated versions of Windows, MS Office, Autocad etc to reach a certain threshold after which it would be qualified as an "economic crime on a particularly large scale".
- kemitchell 5y agoThere was a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when foreign vendors tried to the RIAA/MPAA tactic of highly publicized enforcement against individuals and small institutions. Microsoft, for example. It mostly backfired. They eventually shifted to enforcing against large entities and intermediaries. Same as in the West.
- _the_inflator 5y agoBad times for SaaS businesses I guess.
- risyachka 5y agoRussia never was a major source of saas revenue.
- phpnode 5y agoBad times for non-saas businesses you mean?
- methyl 5y agoBad times for Russian SaaS customers.
- doctor_eval 5y agoBad times for Ukrainians mostly.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
- rocgf 5y agoYou're making it sound as Russia is doing the West a favor by going easy on its response. As if Russia is merciful and we should be grateful.
- tut-urut-utut 5y agoWell, they can't go all-in yet. They need to be able to increase their countermeasures after the USA introduce more rigorous measures. As someone living in Europe, I'm not happy that the EU was forced to impose sanctions on oil and gas, while the USA still imports Russian oil. And it's the Europe that will be devastated if it comes to nuclear war, both USA are big enough to partially survive. So, yes, every step in avoiding escalation, not going to maximum is a good step, if it would increase the duration of human life in Europe for a few more years.
- SSLy 5y agoIt wasn't the EU that has escalated the conflict two Thursdays ago.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- piokoch 5y agoIn the times when a lot of software is sold as SaaS, it might be exactly the same bright idea as invading Ukraine and murdering civilians.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Hamuko 5y agoWell, you get pirated Windows and Office, which is probably all that your average Russian business needs.
- dijit 5y agoDevils advocate: if the majority of business software is sold from the US and the US is refusing to sell software to Russia, what choice is there? I’m sure the Russian government are using Microsoft Office, if they can’t legally buy it anymore then they must make the piracy of it legal: or they’re breaking their own laws. Or they retrain on open/libreoffice. But that unfortunately has a poor track record of working. As staunch of a FOSS advocate as I am, this is probably the sensible move for now. :/
- throw_m239339 5y ago> Devils advocate: if the majority of business software is sold from the US and the US is refusing to sell software to Russia, what choice is there? The right choice is to stop murdering civilians in Ukraine and invading their free nation. It's pretty simple.
- phoe-krk 5y ago> Devils advocate: if the majority of business software is sold from the US and the US is refusing to sell software to Russia, what choice is there? "Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed there" is an obvious choice that comes to my mind.
- neverminder 5y ago> Leave Ukraine and pay for the war crimes committed there This is what eventually will happen, but over Putin's dead body most likely. "Live by the sword, die by the sword", that kinda thing, etc. Everybody agrees that by starting this pointless war Putin has painted himself into a corner.
- xvilka 5y agoIt might spur development of the FOSS alternatives, like Wine and ReactOS, FreeCAD and LibreCAD, GIMP and Krita, Octave and Sage, etc; for all kinds of the proprietary software that was blocked.
- davidgerard 5y agohttps://ru.libreoffice.org/ https://ru.libreoffice.org/
- rwmj 5y agoIf closed source forks of copyleft projects become legal then will FOSS still benefit? On the one hand, just generally having FOSS more widely used could be good in and of itself, and closed source forks are difficult to maintain especially if the project upstream is lively. On the other hand it might mean Russian companies adding great features to GPL software and not sharing them.
- pabs3 5y ago> Russian companies adding great features to GPL software and not sharing them. I suspect that is already happening. For example Astra Linux is a Debian derivative but their developers don't appear to be active within Debian. The other thing is that some FOSS may remove support for Russia in some way. A font removed characters only used in Russian/Belarusian. Qt are blocking downloads from Russia/Belarus. OpenBLAS are considering removing support for Russian Elbrus processors. https://github.com/hikikomori82/osifont/issues/11 https://github.com/hikikomori82/osifont/issues/11 https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042288.html https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-Marc... https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/issues/3551 https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/issues/3551 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenBLAS-Russia-Elbrus-Issue https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenBLAS... So the non-shared forks of FOSS are likely to be inevitable.
- SSLy 5y ago> A font removed characters only used in Russian/Belarusian All else aside, that's just bloody stupid. A lot of Ukrainians speak Russian as their first language.
- salzig 5y agoBye Bye Russian Translations. Edit: I mean, who would support translations of a language where you're software almost 100% gets pirated. Edit 2: Downvote, without a comment? That's not what i expected from HN.
- dijit 5y agoRussian is spoken in many countries outside of Russia. My former girlfriend is from Estonia and speaks Russian natively. I have colleagues who are Ukrainian and speak Russian primarily.
- salzig 5y agoYes it is, but what else is left to protect your software?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoYou really think a missing translation is going to protect anything? I'm not from Russia, but close enough. We've seen a lot of unofficially translated software (and games) back in the 90s. Some of those translations were really good. And you don't need source code to do it.
- DeWilde 5y agoNothing really. Piracy is widespread in my country and a lot of software being pirated isn't translated. End result? People learned English.
- salzig 5y agowhich would be a preferred goal to have? I'm mean, it doesn't hurt to have more russians beeing more capable in english?
- 5y ago
- Kelteseth 5y agoRelated: Qt disabled downloads for anyone that has a Belarus or Russian IP-Address. There are talks about why they blocked it currently going on at their public mailing list[1]. One argument that came up, is that the downloads are blocked, because Qt is also used in the military. My guess is that this will definitely strengthen other UI toolkits like Flutter in the future. [1] https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-March/042288.html https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2022-Marc...
- xvilka 5y agoFlutter is not an alternative to Qt, not even close. Not to speak about C++ compatibility. If anything, things like GTK+, WxWidgets, EFL are on the same page, albeit less polished and advanced.
- Kelteseth 5y agoDepends on what your requirements are. If it "modern" design (let's not start the millionth discussion on what native/modern design is here), that is also supported on mobile/web, then I would say go with flutter as UI and something like rust as your main language to write your business logic in [1]. You can even use regular c++ with their FFI [2]. [1] https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_rust_bridge https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_rust_bridge [2] https://docs.flutter.dev/development/platform-integration/c-interop https://docs.flutter.dev/development/platform-integration/c-...
- ttybird2 5y agoThe thread in their forum: https://forum.qt.io/topic/134724/unlock-qt-in-russia https://forum.qt.io/topic/134724/unlock-qt-in-russia
- simonh 5y agoIt won't make any real practical difference, there are plenty of indirect ways to get those downloads and I'm sure Russians will start mirroring the repos within the country. This sort of thing is more about making a point.
- 5y ago
- Proven 5y ago
- moltke 5y agoI wonder if this will be the end of the "software market." Wars tend to kill silly things.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago>Wars tend to kill silly things. That silly thing that has provided a good living for me and my family for the last 25 years.
- d82nsjk9 5y agoand stolen jobs from other families who didn't go to a fancy college... what's your point?
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
- simonh 5y agoIt's been shown time and time again that automation increases economic activity and jobs in an economy. This is why we don't live in a hell world of 99% unemployment and universal poverty, with unemployed horse buggy drivers on every street corner, despite unbelievably deep and extensive automation of almost every aspect of our lives.
- d82nsjk9 5y agoYou seem to be right. Thanks!
- AussieWog93 5y ago>It's been shown time and time again that automation increases economic activity and jobs in an economy. Even if it spurs economic activity overall, it doesn't mean the gains of that activity are fairly distributed. Many towns were completely ruined by the decline in manufacturing jobs, even if others propspered.
- booleandilemma 5y agoThe US should legalize pirating Kaspersky Antivirus. /s
- squarefoot 5y agoI would rather uninstall it everywhere for the very high risks it could contain backdoors controlled by the Russian govt.
- blagie 5y agoI'm not opposed to this. I'm opposed to the West imposing its IP regime on the world. I'm supportive of Western copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets in the US and Western Europe. However, the concept of IP ownership -- let alone specifics of how its structured -- are a cultural and human construct. Other countries should be free to figure out other ways of doing this. Very little of this existed prior to around 1700. It's a relatively recent construct too (although there are some historical parallels). I'm not at all convinced we'll make much progress as society if we impose our values on everyone, and expect everyone to behave the same way. There are fundamentals and externalities -- the war on Ukraine is wrong, and we should intervene. However, on something like having IP law, let alone breaking it up into copyrights/patents/trademarks, let alone stating durations and contexts of all of those, this just seems like overreach. I feel like this is one of those places where corporate lobbyists managed to change people's values in a way which is quite unfortunate. People learn about IP theft in elementary school, it gets integrated into UN human rights documents, and something which is really culturally-dependent is viewed as universal. It wasn't viewed this way when I was a child. Even little things make a big difference. We've gone from "copyright infringement" to words like stealing and theft. They're fundamentally different concepts which were intentionally mixed up. If I steal from you, you no longer have what I've stolen. If I copy your software, you still have it; I might just have deprived you of profits (if I had otherwise bought the software). I'm not arguing against the IP regime in the US/EU, or for breaking IP laws. I'm just arguing we shouldn't force our IP regime on everyone else.
- simonh 5y agoThat seems counter to the notion of cultural appropriation being wrong. If other cultures should be allowed to duplicate any of our cultural or economic artefacts wholesale if they choose, doesn't that work the other way around? I know, that's happened a lot in the past, but aren't we moving towards recognising that was wrong and figuring out more respectful forms of cultural and commercial interchange?
- satao 5y agoAre you implying it doesn't happen right now? I'm brazilian, and over here there's cases of american and european scientists patenting drugs using components from herbs that are traditional to our native people... Then they patent it and we can't use our own plants in our industry because it's been patented.
- twa999 5y agountil I am out of bullets or until I am out of blood I will fight for US copyright law in russia. i pledge my allegiance to the walt disney company
- b112 5y agoHeh, would be just slightly disturbing if now NATO countries suddenly said "no fly zone!"
- twa999 5y agoImagine if U.S. politicians decided to go to war on behalf of corporations and their interests. That'd be crazy.
- jdrc 5y agoyou would not want a country in which politicians decide alone against the interest of their businesses and their own people That's pretty much exactly what Putin or Kim jong un is doing https://glineq.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-end-of-end-of-history-what-have-we.html https://glineq.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-end-of-end-of-histor...
- twa999 5y agothank you world bank economist. You truly have the best interests of the people at heart.
- dang 5y agoPlease stop posting flamewar comments. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys what this place is supposed to be for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- contravariant 5y ago
- ck2 5y agoBetween this and the news they are now arresting anyone for posting or broadcasting anything they consider "fake news" (and shutting down BBC in Russia) they are in full culture collapse. Anyone can see this won't end well and won't end anytime soon, what country is going to end sanctions while even one Russian soldier is still in Ukraine and for example it took TWENTY years for US to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. So likely still there until 2030 unless somehow Putin is replaced with sanity which is unlikely. Now I wonder what country they will do this to next because they are already under maximum sanctions and they know NATO/US won't go in and won't even do a no-fly zone. So why not double down with yet another country?
- ericmay 5y agoMoldova is next, and Georgia. Both applied for EU membership this past week (token gesture as they won’t be admitted, certainly not quickly enough). The “no-fly zone” also means no Ukrainian forces flying and is kind of a benefit for Russia right now given how the war appears to be going. It’s also a risky escalation without much benefit. NATO jets shooting at Russian jets give Putin the justification he needs to go attack NATO countries.
- ck2 5y agoYes but Putin is dropping 500 pound bombs on civilian apartment complexes. Jets vs Jets and military vs military is the horror of war but right now it's a slaughter of the innocent. To pretend it's -not- going to end up in multi-country conflict if we just sit back is -exactly- what happened in WW2, everyone sat back and watched while millions of innocents suffered and died and then finally drew a line. Ok, no "boots on the ground". But stop the 500 pound bombs on apartment complexes. Imagine if it was your street and what you'd be begging the world to be saved.
- ericmay 5y agoI don’t think you can piecemeal it. If we do a “no-fly zone” you might as well put boots on the ground because that’s what will happen anyway. What do you think stops Putin from “feeling threatened” by NATO warplanes flying out of Poland and using a nuclear weapon on an airbase to “solve the problem”. If you cross the threshold then why wouldn’t he just assume NATO is attacking Russia and just start new military operations? The no-fly zone is certainly worth considering but it adds instability with unpredictable outcomes. Of course if people were dropping bombs on my neighborhood I’d be begging for salvation. I’d be begging for more than a no-fly zone. I’d want Russian military bases bombed and international forces engaging in combat to repel invaders too. Should we also do that? Russians aren’t using only 500lb bombs. They’re on the ground with machine guns, they launch missiles from Russian territory, and they use artillery. We have to be careful. There is a lot at stake here. I agree with your suggestions about appeasement, but the situations aren’t totally the same since NATO apparently has a far more dominant military and economically it’s not even a discussion. Germany had the best military to start WWII.
- spupe 5y agoThe tech aspect of the sanctions deserve to be more scrutinized. The average Russian company certainly can pirate Windows (now legally), but now they have to worry about all sorts of backdoors and vulnerabilities that will expose them to their competitors. It would seem that the logical solution would be to adopt FOSS rather than pirate, at least for any serious professional work.
- molszanski 5y agoI am not sure if I would be mad if anonymous would create a pirated versions all that software
- 2-718-281-828 5y agonow let's get Yandex back on track and we finally have a promising competitor for Google.
- everyone 5y agoEvery cloud has a silver lining I guess?
- piskov 5y agoOne should take this with a grain of salt. For now, it’s only a rumor. And it may stay that way because there’re a lot of domestic software in Russia as well: you cannot legalize piracy without hurting your own IT. The same was with IT industry support rumors last week: one (among several) of the leaked proposals was to remove taxes on salary for IT. It stayed off the table.
- gs17 5y agoRussian software isn't affected: > among which is being discussed the suspension of criminal and administrative liability for use of pirated software “from countries supporting sanctions”.
- AussieWog93 5y agoWere these laws even really enforced in the first place? Russia has always been pretty notorious for piracy.
- MrDisposable 5y agoIn recent years, no. Everyone was afraid of huge fines (and maybe even jail terms, if memory serves) for pirated software, and there was a time when police actively searched office computers for pirated software from major suppliers that had branches in Russia (Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk etc). Torrents, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
- kobalsky 5y agoI don't know what the deal is in Russia but in Argentina piracy is rampant but Microsoft has been ruthless and they have done stuff it would make your skin crawl. Microsoft basically has power of police here. I don't know who they bribed or in exchange of what or how they managed to achieve this. They go for companies, basically they send you an email and ask you about your infrastructure, licenses and tell you on X day we will be there to audit the software licenses that you are using. This is not optional, this is mandatory. You have to let them in since they will come with cops if necessary. We have dealt with them sadly, but we are a linux only shop so we made abundtantly clear that we were going to fight until the end to make them accountable and bill them dearly for every second they spent here. After a few back and forths they decided it wasn't necessary to audit our company, probably not because of our indisposition, but because they probably realized we weren't lying and there was no money to collect here. To add insult to injury they will use these emails to offer you Microsoft Teams. It's insane. I cannot wish them ill enough.
- fluoridation 5y agoI'm from Argentina. I've heard this before and I didn't really believe it, and maybe I still don't. Like, there are so many things you might do that could be a spanner in the works for this scheme. What if you hang up on them? What if you refuse to answer the door? To my knowledge there are no laws that require one to open the door for police; if they have an order from a judge they don't need to knock. What if you refuse to unlock your systems to allow them to inspect them? Do you know where I could get more information on this?
- Decabytes 5y agoThe author talks about access being shut off for subscription based softwares. I think this further highlights the danger of subscription based software (regardless of whether you think it’s being used for “good” in this context). Also The Equity and Concourse Fonts used in this blog are by Matthew Butterick a famous Rackateer! Didn’t expect to come across it here
- kemitchell 5y agoMatthew is a famous lawyer-Rackateer. The Equity family was originally designed for legal writing! I have been a proud licensee of his work for many years. I was grateful for his special permission to use the type on my blog, before that was covered by his standard, self-serve license. Alas, Matthew's fonts don't include Cyrillic alphabets. So I swap in Noto Serif for the body text of multilingual posts.
- norswap 5y agoAs if they were enforcing jack squat currently?? It's well known that Russia is a safe haven for piracy & copyright infringment. Can't say that hasn't benefitted me quite a few times.
- nosianu 5y agoUkraine was the same last time I checked. Which, admittedly, was 2006 when I bought cracked software on an Odessa book & CD market (lots of small vendor stalls, a permanent market). I've been to both Russia and Ukraine a few times since but that was the only time I needed software (temporarily, only while I was there, relax guys - back then I had a paid license for the entire Adobe Suite back in the office at home). Picture: https://www.flickr.com/photos/11634911@N04/4005305105 https://www.flickr.com/photos/11634911@N04/4005305105 The illegal software actually came with pretty good support and money-back guarantee, and it wasn't just en empty promise. So, this phenomenon is not limited to Russia and in the specific current context, unless things in Ukraine have changed(?), they both do it.
- alin23 5y agoI'm tired of the TnT Russian team cracking my macOS apps. Both Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi) and rcmd (https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd) are now available for free on macOS piracy websites. I made many attempts at discouraging this through anti-piracy measures I learned while working as a malware researcher a few years ago. But if I want my apps to also be available on offline devices, there's really no way to combat this. The apps are also targetted more toward power users which are more likely to know about cracked apps. This is really hurting indie devs.
- kemitchell 5y agoWe need a much stronger indie dev scene. Drop me an e-mail anytime if I might be of help.
- jpalawaga 5y agoNot that you asked my opinion, but $23/year for screendimming software--its no wonder people crack this. The only realistic scenario that I'd pay that is if my employer was fronting the cost. Then again, maybe for some people it really is delivering that much value. Lunar lite and rcmd seem priced fairly. If it makes you feel any better (probably not), the people pirating your software probably wouldn't have paid for it anyhow. Or if they did pay for it, would pay for it with things like stolen app store giftcards. In another life, I was quite money-limited, and so I downloaded basically every game, movie, song, and app. I didn't feel badly about it either. I was never going to buy the media. I couldn't. Once I got old enough and had enough disposable income to not have to pirate things, I stopped. But quashing my piracy would have never equated in more sales. Anyone who sees a pirate download and assume that's a lost sale is deluded--its not happening. I think the best methods are trying to get people to pay (who haven't already) are probably guilt or a productive-spirited suggestion. If you can detect that someone is cracking your software or doesn't have a valid license, put a donation link in the shape of a coffee cup in the corner of your software. At least people have the option to support you. Otherwise--you'll never best the crackers.
- alin23 5y agoIt’s not screen dimming. It is an app to fully control the monitor without using its physical buttons. Lunar can change the hardware brightness, the same one that you can change using the monitor OSD. That in itself required a lot of reverse engineering and research about the DDC protocol. Adaptive brightness, ambient light sensor integration and other automatic features also needed months of non-stop work. Plus, the app is open source, trying to give something back to the community which gave me the inspiration to create this: https://github.com/alin23/Lunar https://github.com/alin23/Lunar Even with $23 per license, after taxes I barely make half of what I made at my previous job where I worked less hours. I don’t understand how you can dismiss this so simply. the people pirating your software probably wouldn't have paid for it anyhow I heard this argument so many times.. it's like saying to someone who just got their bike stolen while they were trying to sell it | the thief would have probably never bought it If you don't need the Pro features, don't pay for them and don't use them. Simple as that. Why does it feel okay to steal them in the software world, but it's clearly a crime in the real world?
- cryptica 5y agoThis is interesting. It seems to be the way forward. I think it should be extended to everything including hardware and medicine. Free market. Free to copy, free to improve the work of others. Companies need to get creative; be the first on the market then sell contracts to users, sell subscriptions, loyalty programs... They don't need copyright or patent protection; they just need creativity and they need to build trust with their customers. I don't believe for a second that this will harm innovation in any way. Big pharma dies most of their innovation using taxpayer money anyway... It costs them nothing so why would they stop R&D? If they did, some other company would quickly step in and do the R&D using government money...
- stevespang 5y ago
- jcranberry 5y agoTitle should be Russia to legalize software piracy of countries supporting sanctions.
- nojonestownpls 5y agoUsually moderators are quick to change titles here to more accurate ones, especially in sensitive topics like this. I wonder why this one hasn't been changed.
- luciusdomitius 5y agoTo be honest this is easily less unfair than the ever-extending copyright periods.
- lsllc 5y agoDupe, link was posted 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30569648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30569648
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoThat's not a dupe. > If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- lsllc 5y agoSure, if it was 6 months ago, but 2 days ago?
- Dah00n 5y agoSo much propaganda in this thread.
- shp0ngle 5y agoFinally, Richard Stallman won
- kemitchell 5y agoAllowing copies doesn't guarantee access in the first place. That's why Stallman wrote a license that levers off copyright to require disclosure of trade secrets, i.e. source code. If the USA abolished software copyright tomorrow, more software development would go behind closed doors, and more finished apps would get distributed as binaries only. None of the users currently dependent on proprietary SaaS would be "liberated".
- jmpman 5y agoHow long until Western countries legalize software piracy of Russian software?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ericson2314 5y agoOh, excellent! May the Ukrainians win, and US IP bullshit loose. I bet this bodes well for the Indian sci hub case.
- ramesh31 5y agoThe NSA must be licking their chops right now at the thought of Russian government entities using zero-day riddled pirate software.
- danesparza 5y agoI wonder what Jetbrains or Kaspersky feel about this (as they are prominent software companies that have offices in Russia)...
- vmception 5y agoThey really pulling all the stops to make sure TorrentLeech never goes down
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- electrondood 5y agoIt's important to keep in perspective: this is a response to the natural consequences of invading a peaceful country unprovoked.
- outside1234 5y agoThis will just accelerate the centralization of everything in the cloud out of the reach of sovereigns. But ok, go for it.
- legalcorrection 5y agoHonestly seems like a proportional response to the sanctions, which have gone so far as to steal the Russian government's deposits in foreign banks. Not that those sanctions are or aren't justified, but the west had to expect this in response.
- 1970-01-01 5y agoNote this is about using pirated software. This isn't about breaking protection in software to allow it to be used. Breaking copy protection is still illegal in Russia.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoWhat I got from that, is “Nothing much is changing, but we won’t listen to Western corporate whining, while pretending to care.”
- jiveturkey 5y agoThe article itself notes that this is more of a political statement than of any practical consequence. Piracy is already rampant in Russia.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- olliej 5y agoSo? They’re also bombing cities, shooting civilians, and mining refugee routes. If software piracy even figures in your judgement of their actions there’s something wrong with you
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoI believe they will be known as Software Privateers as their hacks will be conducted under letter of Marque and Reprisal.
- colordrops 5y agoIt's not piracy if it's legal.
- excalibur 5y agoIn Soviet Russia, pirates ban YOU!
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoI'm really hoping that this could be the start of a worldwide IP reform (both copyright and patents). The idea of patents (limited exclusivity for disclosure) makes sense, but reality has strayed far from it. Likewise, copyright with its obscene and ever-expanding protection terms and lack of fair use protections in most countries is in dire need of a reform. However, this might also backfire by pushing companies more towards making everything a SaaS subscription service so customers never have any code they could pirate.
- usednet 5y agoA fantastic silver lining of the war I suppose.
- mrlonglong 5y agoI expect we'll start to see software that will include code that detects Russian character sets, Russian timezones, Russian internet addresses and will refuse to work if unlicenced. Most likely they'll be able to bypass those but a significant majority won't be able to pirate due to lack of technical knowledge.
- wildpeaks 5y agoAn interesting point from the history of GOG is that it originated from a market where piracy was the norm, Noclip has a great documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffngZOB1U2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffngZOB1U2A
- mrtweetyhack 5y ago
- mistrial9 5y agojust read this essay -- very impressive that the author wrote a PhD thesis in Russian language, and lived in Moscow. However, the essay does not support the initial paragraphs, it seems. This is a thin overview of a forty year development of digital media economy. While Moscow copy-shops in the early 2000s may draw rebuke now, I saw late 1990s Hong Kong and WOW was there a LOT of Pirated Everything. Probably I would guess, more than Moscow. Fast forward to 2022, and there is every bit of this, and more, with layers of economy involved like a soil analysis of the Amazon River basin. Are US interests threatened by stopped-payment subscriptions to Office 365? Does anyone want to pay their Oracle monthlies? As noted in the article, a lot of Western big-name enterprise software was cancelled recently whether it is pirated or not. Drastic circumstance are a trigger, but the world of software is not done evolving and plenty of the accusations here are not new. I wanted this essay to be more specific, and to get into more examples, but instead it glosses over large topics to come to a hasty conclusion.
- stereoradonc 5y agoSci-Hub is Russian too :-) I hope they will "liberate" software from the evil "billionaires" (they are called oligarchs in Western Media). Nothing exposes the western hypocrisy more.
- togs 5y agoK but Russia is where we all illegally stream from right now.