WINDOWS 7! GENUINE CHINA COPIES, VYF RANT N BOSSIE! A few years ago, while on joint community/SAPS foot patrol amidst the hustle and bustle of the vendor stalls in the MitchellsPlain town centre, I heard someone advertising computer software in a way that only a Cape Flats street vendor can : Windows Seven! Windows Seven! Genuine China copies! Vyftag rant virrie vollene Professinil bossie met alles en wat wat! Only in Cape Flats Afrikaaps can the Windows 7 Professional Bundle be referred to as a bossie as if you are selling a tied bunch of fish on the side of the road, and additional Windows Professional features be called wat wat. In case you are wondering what happened to this vendor when we approached him; he disappeared into a bustling throng of Christmas shoppers frantically buying counterfeit goods from other vendors and shops primarily stocked with the same pirate goods. I asked one electronic shop owner where the Windows 7 China copies came from, and while he denied that he sold any, he actually mentioned Guangdong in China - not just the country but the specific province too! Upon further research, his information appeared to be quite accurate. The city of Guangzhou (old Canton) in the province of Guangdong, was the first designated Special Economic Zone in 1980 and is home to both the bi-annual international Canton Fair since 1957, as well as one of the largest second hand markets in the world housed in the Guangzhou Dashatou Second Hand Trade Centre, where it is alleged that both legal and informal traders primarily profit from dealing in counterfeit goods. Guangdong is also home to the once tranquil fishing village of Shenzen on the other side of the Sham Chun River which separates it from Hong Kong. Modern day Shenzen is alleged to be the primary source of cheap counterfeit electronic, software and designer goods for Hong Kong consumers as well as exporters who ship them in containers to Africa. And thus, by extension, is aggregate demand in the MitchellsPlain Town Centre market, umbilically linked to oversupply from Guangdong in China. At this point you are probably wondering where this Marxist is going with this story. Fortunately Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft who produces Windows 7 put all the proverbial words in my ideological mouth when he responded to a question on large scale piracy of the Windows 7 in Guangdong as follows: As long as theyre going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. (Quoted in Robert Neuwirths book Stealth of Nations - 2011). The critical issue in Gates response is the amoral expedience involved. Can it be that the root of this expedience might lie in the Microsofts drive to penetrate all markets and grow their market share at all costs to the extent that their Windows brand should even monopolise the illegal counterfeit market, despite not directly profiting from it? Maybe they are profiting from the counterfeit trade differently. Maybe what counterfeit production in Guangdong of Windows 7 and informal trade as far as MitchellsPlain Town Centre really provides Bill Gates and Microsoft, is free marketting and advertising, as well as a secure and unpaid sales force for their brand. Now this is a better reason to track down that pesky running dog imperialist Windows 7 street vendor in MitchellsPlain Town Centre. As for Capitalism, perhaps nothing has really changed systemically in the non-existent line between legal and illegal since 1705 when the poet Baynard Mandeville wrote about formal and informal markets in his poetry anthology titled The Grumbling Hive : All trades and places knew some cheat, no calling was without deceit, Every part was full of vice, Yet the whole mass a paradise.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 05:23:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015