The reality of Asia's Piracy (Score 1)

I live in a city of 1+ million in Asia and have a software company. I walk out my office door and find nothing but Pirated software. The reason: In this city of 1 mil+, I know that probably 90% of the people make less than $100 per month, for their entire family. Probably 7% make between $100 and $200 per month. There is probably about 3% who make above that (some extrememly wealthy, but most making less than $500). Imagine spending your entire salary for 4 months to buy MS Office! You wouldn't and neither will they.

The BSA should be using their inflated figures, not only to convince people away from piracy, but using them to convince the software companies to price their products appropriately for these markets.

The drug companies got the hint and provide very expensive drugs very cheaply for these markets. How do they do this? They get their research money from the developed world, not the under-developed world. The local drug companies, who are subsidiaries of the ones you know and love, are very successful here, even with the low drug costs. (Generica Prevacid cost $3+ per pill in the USA, $0.10 here)

Why can't companies like MS recognize this? They did release some crippled versions recently for Indonesia and Thailand (I think), but that misses the point. Why would I buy a crippled Windows version for $25 or whatever it is, when I can buy the real thing for $.50?

You may want to, and legally can, call the people in my city pirates, but when there is NO other choice for them, what should they do? I know I might be flamed for supporting piracy (which I don't), but you come and live in Asia a while, and you will understand what the masses have to do.

What I am trying to do is fight piracy by helping (out of my own pocket) develop and encourage Free and Open Source Software in English and even translate it to their native languages, so piracy won't be necessary, AND they can play a part of the 21st century, instead of producing illegal drugs and terrorism.