Environmental piracy

OPINION: Sometimes an idea is just so good you know you won’t be the only one to think of it. And sometimes it’s just as well that there are a few others who did think of it, and are out there doing it.

When somebody else gets busted by the anti-piracy brigade for using your idea, that’s when you suddenly realise it wasn’t your idea in the first place, because you never had such an idea and you never did it anyway.

That’s the line we’re taking here at Rabid Reseller after reading that a multinational software vendor has made some Bris Vegas shopkeepers pay for all the piracy perpetrated by their customers. Talk about a miscarriage of justice! Why would users think all that software on their new PC was free?

We just pre-load it in the shop to save them time, not that we actually ever did that of course, and then the ingrates go whinging to the piracy people.

It should be obvious that they were supposed to buy a copy if they liked the trial version we’d provided for them, or would have provided if we’d thought of doing this, which of course we never did. We don’t recall ever saying that our PCs came with all this software at no charge.

Apparently some people think that when we wrote ‘free’ in our adverts, it meant you didn’t have to pay. That is if we’d ever had any adverts, and that is yet to be established beyond any reasonable doubt, your honour.

All we were doing, if we’d actually done anything, and we’re not saying we really ever did, was explaining that there was no charge for the ‘free’ pre-load of the trial software, or there wouldn’t have been if we’d ever actually pre-loaded any software, which of course we never did because we didn’t think of it and if we had then we still wouldn’t have done it, your honour. Now we can hardly be blamed for people’s fantasies can we? Everybody wants something for nothing.

Now we’re not conceding that anything like that ever happened at Rabid Reseller. We’re just explaining how it could have happened if we’d ever thought of doing anything like that, not that we did of course, and if we had then we still wouldn’t have, because we didn’t, and anyone who says we did doesn’t work here any more.

In fact they never worked here in the first place. But if we had done anything like that, we’re still not sure why the shopkeepers are being called pirates. It’s not like they were the ones using the rotten software, if there had been any, which of course there wasn’t.

Software is too expensive if you ask us anyway. Well, we certainly have to pay too much for the stuff, which is why nobody wants to buy it, and why would they when they can get if off their mates for nothing, or so we’ve been told, because we’ve never actually seen this happen, you understand. So you see these users were going to steal the software anyway, and all we did, er, all we would have done if we’d thought of doing it, would have been to help the environment by reducing the number of CDs being burned.

And we would also have saved a bunch of trees because nobody would have got a giant cardboard box with a tiny CD inside. There you go, that’s the real reason they’re prosecuting shopkeepers.

It’s a conspiracy by the timber industry to sell more cardboard boxes to keep up demand for chopping down old-growth forests in Tasmania.

So you see Rabid Reseller was just out there protecting the planet for future generations to enjoy a walk in the forest and the next thing you know some multinational software vendor is bleating about piracy and it was all funded by the woodcutters. That is, I mean to say, that’s what would have happened if we’d ever done any pre-loading of hard drives with software, which if course we didn’t, but we’d only have been doing it to save the planet if we did. But we didn’t. The defence rests your honour.

Gotta go, customers waiting!