Universal Supplies Co.

The Magic of FREE

One killer phrase is FREE. There is a lot of marketing including free trial of everything including software. Of course, free is not always bad. Before the Internet, I always had trouble finding if some software would be suitable to use. The only way was to buy a pirated copy, tried it and if it was good, then bought a legal copy. With the Internet and the awareness by software producer, free trial version has solved this problem. Certainly, pirated copies are not FREE, just much cheaper than original.

The most famous fight against FREE is the music and movie industries. Starting from Napster, there is a list of such P2P services giving cross download of free songs and movies. We believe that most are not fans at all. Just young ones or naughty adults addicted with theft like kleptomania. Some downloads may not be played at all.

It is quite astonishing to have cases like the recent one that a Hong Kong man was found guilty of using BitTorrent to upload a number of movie for free download for nothing. Perhaps for some, it is a way to satisfy if they can act against the law or robbing the riches. Is a song or movie kind of necessities? From some survey, at least on said that due to the poor quality of song, it was not entitled to spend money to buy, so it might be a justified way to download for free. Shall we listen to a poor quality song? Well, it may need a psychological study to see what kind of mind would behave in such way.

Perhaps the only thing that annoyed many is the FREE Linux. It is so widely announced; yet everyone has to pay before actually working on it. Certainly, we know that it is the Linux that is free, not the application or the additional support. In fact, as Bill Gate said, it is just another UNIX. I think that Bill Gate is right if it is about the FREE. Some may be confused whether UNIX is free. Some versions of UNIX are free while some are not. Just see the legal case between SCO and IBM.

Some free software packages are great. Not only that they can be used with exact functions announced, some even will be upgraded at no charge, for example, the famous Adaware SE and Irfanview. Microsoft's Antispyware is also free, but it is just kind of additional services for buyers of Windows, not at all free in nature.

However, there are many taking this golden phrase to run their tricks like adware and spyware embedded with free stuff. Many have suffered and will take extreme care if not totally reject everything that is free unless it is supplied by famous name.

If this will continue, then every soon, FREE would be monopolized by large corporations only.

Offering free things to all is not a business, but it will be a push for other earning. Just like Google whose free search is great to us, yet Google earns a lot from commercial opportunities with our visits. No wonder, Google keeps on scanning books that any loss of copyright is not their concern. Will Google earn more from disclosing others' copyrighted material? Can infringement of copyright application stop Google? This remains something for us to watch in the coming days.

F. H. Tong, Nov. 3, 2005