I'm writing, now, as an individual, not as a Microsoft employee, so nothing in this blog entry should be construed as any kind of statement from Microsoft Corporation or any of its subsidiaries. Etc - you get the deal!

I have always secretly been a fan of the Open Source movement; but at the same time suspicious of that movement. The idea of a bunch of great developers getting together to create some cool tools for us to use on our computers is laudable, but who are these people that we think of as the "Robin Hoods" of the Software world?

Last week I heard a radio interview with an intellectual property lawyer who was addressing a convention in London about counterfeit goods ; his big message was that almost 70% of the UK population (probably extrapolated from a small, but relevant, sample) are happy to buy cheap "Knock Offs" as the don't understand the links between organised crime and/or International terrorism and these fake goods.  Whether it is cheap: DVD's, CD's, Watches, Software, Jeans or any other consumer goods that you can think of, the chances are that, if it is extremely cheap, then someone else is making a profit.  Who is that?

While Global Capitalism has become a favourite “whipping boy” for the media and global corporations are regularly condemned for human rights abuses we, as consumers, are frequently trapped between two evils; should we buy the cheap “lookalike” or the “real thing”.  Why should we make the “Rich Cats“ richer at the cost of exploitation of cheap labour in the East?

That is a bigger topic than I have time to deal with here (in case you haven’t guessed, I do not support exploitation in any form).

My big worry is where is your money going when you buy a bootleg DVD at the local market/car boot sale?  When you buy a “knock off” Rolex watch in Oxford Street; where does the money go?

Well the jury is “in” on this one.  Consider this (from Robert Charette’s Blog http://spectrum.ieee.org/nov07/5668/3 )

“Groups like al-Qaeda resemble in some ways the classic insurgents of the past, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, but several factors distinguish them from their predecessors, Robb says. For one, they aren't state-sponsored, which makes them harder to track down and eradicate. Being self-financed, they generate significant income from donations as well as from black-market commerce.”

Other estimates put the total Criminal/Terrorist “GDP” at $3 Trillion!  (Anecdotally UK counterfeit software distributors have confided that; “it is more profitable than selling Heroin and you don’t get locked up if you get caught”)

The point is; just like the fair trade movement, if you can’t be sure where it came from and you have no idea where your money is going to, why not spend your money elsewhere?

The final irony in this sordid mess is that it is probably the poor who are funding these “black organisations” because they desire the “good life” trappings and have very limited disposable income!

Nothing much has changed in history; the poor always are “roped” into, and inadvertently suffer from the battles of the rich.