"Microsoft Does Not Enforce Copyright Piracy in China Because of Network Externalities"

Bill Gates said in 1998:"As long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours," he said of Chinese users, according to Fortune magazine. "They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." Read more here.

Now Mr Bagwad Jal Park, a freelance writer who lives in Chennai, India, asserts in an interesting article for Amateurs Economists that the survival of Microsoft Windows depends on copyright piracy.

"A company that has amazing technological and financial resources at its command should actually find it quite a trivial matter to simply enforce over the Internet the policy of a unique copy of Windows being installed on just one computer. I believe it can certainly be done."

Then Mr Bagwad contends that Microsoft is not doing this because of the network externalities. Read his article here.