According to Ancestory.com: “In general, we think of a generation being about 25 years - from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child.” With that understanding, by the end of this blog, you’ll either concur or dissent that we’re going to see the elimination of software piracy within the next 25-years. I look at Office 365 as a piracy elimination tool as Microsoft’s third greatest move. The first was acquiring the MS-DOS operating system from the north Seattle computer shop on the cheap (see the book “GATES” for details). The second was the creation of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program where the best minds in the business provided no-cost technical support to customers on forum board and other “community goodness” vehicles.
This is how it will work:
In the past, Microsoft software was typically burned to disc to install it. That allowed for the code breakers to create illegal copies of the software that could be unlocked. Ergo, Piracy. In fact, in developing regions such as APAC and LATAM, many countries are piracy-dominated. My friend Tony Bradley wrote an eloquent thesis on how piracy negatively impacts Microsoft a couple of years ago for PC World. Here’s another tidbit for you: the entire industry has lost over $50B to piracy. On this first point, I’m sure we all agree.
Office 365 will eliminate piracy in one human generation because it’s a service that is subscription-based. When your payment is rejected to use Office 365, it shuts down (see figure). It’s controlled by an e-commerce function like other services. For example, we use HootSuite for our twitter activity (@harrybrelsford and @smbnation) and if I somehow miss a monthly payment, HootSuite is suspended. So the programmatic mechanism, I submit, is in place for the elimination of piracy.
With that all said – piracy will be replaced by fraud. What won’t disappear will be fraudulent bank card charges (already prevalent on the Internet). To make Office 365 work properly, you have to pay your bill. So the way the credit card information is comprised (such as the Target 40-million credit card hack), said cards will be used to engage in fraud such as paying for the Office 365 subscription.
Essentially you are solving one problem but you still have another. Does that make sense?
PS – I look forward to meeting you at the Office 365 Nation conference in late September in Redmond, WA. Learn more at www.o365nation.com.
