anti-piracy

Summary

The Ubuntu Live CD should have an application to educate the world on exactly what the penalties of piracy are to try to move some of the people using Windows illegally to free options. An ebook should describe these and show that there is no need to pirate at all, listed along with the many applications for Windows that are already on the Live CD. It should also focus on the difficulties of bypassing anti-piracy measures on proprietary software, and the dangers of using a system that you cannot update.

Use cases

Frank pirates Windows XP Pro because he doesn't see why he should buy it when the guys at his office are handing out the discs for nothing. This also prevents him from looking at free as in free speech options such as Ubuntu. His friend gives him the Ubuntu Live CD to try out, which Frank does. He loads it from his Windows partition and is greeted by an application teaching him why he doesn't need to break the law to get a computer that works.

Rob wants to upgrade to Vista because he thinks XP is outdated. But to do that he'll need to buy a new PC or pay $200 or £200 to buy it retail. He is strongly tempted to get it from the Bit Torrent when it is available (I have no reason to believe that it won't eventually be available from the P2P networks). But in the meantime, he downloads an Ubuntu ISO and tries it out and decides that it might not be worthwhile pirating Windows at all.

Design

The application should be listed among the other Windows version applications on the Live CD, along with Firefox etc. This way, it can run from a Windows box. It should emphasise that we don't think piracy is acceptable any more than Microsoft or Apple do. BUT that you can have this excellent piece of software for FREE. It should be very positive and focused on the great things that Ubuntu can do to make Windows unnecessary or even a secondary choice.

I think that it should tell users the truth. I.e. if they want to play games, they should probably stick with Windows too.

Implementation

Format

Ideas

Comments

Warbo: Rather than an application, wouldn't it be better to just rephrase the current descriptions used? For example, just looking at a Dapper CD case maybe "You are encouraged and legally entitled to copy, reinstall, modify, and redistribute this CD for yourself and your friends" could become something like "You are encouraged and legally entitled to copy, reinstall, modify and redistribute the software on this CD for yourself, friends and anyone else. There is no need to pay for, or illegally use unlicensed copies of, proprietary software if you have this CD." Obviously I am not a marketing-minded person, and I just threw that together in a few minutes, but you get the idea.


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See also http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy


CategoryMarketing


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See also http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy


CategoryMarketing


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anti-piracy (last edited 2008-08-06 16:30:24 by localhost)