Resolve and Fortitude : Microsoft's ''SECRET POWER BROKER'' breaks his silence by Joachim Kempin Page A
Authors: Joachim Kempin
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over common sense!
My last stop was Taiwan, where I attended the opening of our new facility. As part of our counterstrategy, we decided to bring in experienced support personnel from the United States to give it a running start. They made all the difference in the world. The smaller OEMs DRI’s executive had supposedly won over and boasted about hugely appreciated the sudden attention. DRI had no permanent feet on the ground, sporadically dispatching personnel from the United States. Being able to nurture the manufacturers locally daily was the key to welcoming them back into our realm. The result: six months after my HK visit, DRI had lost 90 percent of her accounts on the island.
At the end of the visit, I was joined by Bill to formally open our new sub. His visit to Taiwan was publicized when it was announced that he would be the keynote speaker at a local ISV conference. The idea to direct attention to the conference and increase attendance backfired; we received a bomb threat. Traveling with Bill and visiting additional customers meant I was included in all the security measures. Sweeping hotel rooms for bombs, changing cars frequently, and never venturing alone in public were but a few. Fortunately, it was a hoax. I admired Bill for not cancelling the trip. After experiencing all the hoopla and intrigue, achieving celebrity status like Bill’s was definitely not what I longed for!
PIRATES OF THE WORLD
On my trips, I made a point to personally investigate how small system builders were conducting their businesses and where their OS software derived from. I personally observed the incredible amount of piracy happening in Asia, South America, and to my surprise, Germany. Software theft seemed to have no meaningful moral or legal consequences. Any child could do it by just copying, and hardly anybody watched.
Copies these crooks made did not look like the original software we advertised and sold. Honest buyers recognized the differences and gave the cheaters a hard time. To overcome authenticity objections, a network of illegal replicators sprung up and produced look-alike packages. The illegals often shipped them in small FedEx boxes avoiding discovery. We, in turn, engaged customs authorities to stop them. Their motivation to stop the nuisance: when a counterfeit package changed hands, the government missed out on import duties and taxes, just as we did in royalties!
Our own product management was partially responsible for these thefts by not embedding a copy protection scheme that was difficult to break. In the early days, Bill had made his opinion about stealing software well-known. His comments caused controversy in the industry and with the trade press. In PRC, where piracy was most endemic, IP 17 theft can be traced as far back as Confucius. One thousand five hundred years earlier, together with other Chinese philosophers, he had extolled the virtues of public ownership of IP. Modern day OSs and software apps free to anyone for the taking? We had quite a task ahead of us, reeducating a country with a citizenry of then nearly a billion people misguided for centuries.
I put together a small task force to gain an in-depth understanding of our losses and challenged its team members to turn heedless thieves into honest customers. The team discovered straight off the bat that software replicators our OEMs used were part of the illicit supply chain. Many of them conspired by producing extra copies and selling them out the back door. A number of our own OEM licensees did the same. I estimated we only got paid for two out of three copies in use. This meant my business could have been 50 percent larger—a great motivation to personally lead the crusade against the IP terrorists.
How did this get so out of hand? Our OEMs inserted backup copies of our software and a user manual into every PC box. They were supplied to them by duplicators of their choosing without any control from us. Here laid the crux. So my task
My last stop was Taiwan, where I attended the opening of our new facility. As part of our counterstrategy, we decided to bring in experienced support personnel from the United States to give it a running start. They made all the difference in the world. The smaller OEMs DRI’s executive had supposedly won over and boasted about hugely appreciated the sudden attention. DRI had no permanent feet on the ground, sporadically dispatching personnel from the United States. Being able to nurture the manufacturers locally daily was the key to welcoming them back into our realm. The result: six months after my HK visit, DRI had lost 90 percent of her accounts on the island.
At the end of the visit, I was joined by Bill to formally open our new sub. His visit to Taiwan was publicized when it was announced that he would be the keynote speaker at a local ISV conference. The idea to direct attention to the conference and increase attendance backfired; we received a bomb threat. Traveling with Bill and visiting additional customers meant I was included in all the security measures. Sweeping hotel rooms for bombs, changing cars frequently, and never venturing alone in public were but a few. Fortunately, it was a hoax. I admired Bill for not cancelling the trip. After experiencing all the hoopla and intrigue, achieving celebrity status like Bill’s was definitely not what I longed for!
PIRATES OF THE WORLD
On my trips, I made a point to personally investigate how small system builders were conducting their businesses and where their OS software derived from. I personally observed the incredible amount of piracy happening in Asia, South America, and to my surprise, Germany. Software theft seemed to have no meaningful moral or legal consequences. Any child could do it by just copying, and hardly anybody watched.
Copies these crooks made did not look like the original software we advertised and sold. Honest buyers recognized the differences and gave the cheaters a hard time. To overcome authenticity objections, a network of illegal replicators sprung up and produced look-alike packages. The illegals often shipped them in small FedEx boxes avoiding discovery. We, in turn, engaged customs authorities to stop them. Their motivation to stop the nuisance: when a counterfeit package changed hands, the government missed out on import duties and taxes, just as we did in royalties!
Our own product management was partially responsible for these thefts by not embedding a copy protection scheme that was difficult to break. In the early days, Bill had made his opinion about stealing software well-known. His comments caused controversy in the industry and with the trade press. In PRC, where piracy was most endemic, IP 17 theft can be traced as far back as Confucius. One thousand five hundred years earlier, together with other Chinese philosophers, he had extolled the virtues of public ownership of IP. Modern day OSs and software apps free to anyone for the taking? We had quite a task ahead of us, reeducating a country with a citizenry of then nearly a billion people misguided for centuries.
I put together a small task force to gain an in-depth understanding of our losses and challenged its team members to turn heedless thieves into honest customers. The team discovered straight off the bat that software replicators our OEMs used were part of the illicit supply chain. Many of them conspired by producing extra copies and selling them out the back door. A number of our own OEM licensees did the same. I estimated we only got paid for two out of three copies in use. This meant my business could have been 50 percent larger—a great motivation to personally lead the crusade against the IP terrorists.
How did this get so out of hand? Our OEMs inserted backup copies of our software and a user manual into every PC box. They were supplied to them by duplicators of their choosing without any control from us. Here laid the crux. So my task
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