The great and courageous Microsoft has decided to play an active role in the Arab world. More than that it is adopting the language of pan-Arabism.

The software company has recently called for nothing short of Arab unity in...combating pirating.

A Microsoft official made the call during an event held for World Intellectual Property Day. How nice of him.

As may be well-known, piracy is quite ubiquitous in the Arab world. Of course, Americans trade more in pirated software and media than Arabs, but in the United States it is done in private residence. In the Arab world, it is a public affair.

Where my family’s home is in Tunis, within walking distance there are five stores that sell pirated software and media. It is done in daylight by legitimate businesses whom have a license and pay taxes.

Even the French supermarket chain Carrefour sells pirated movies and music. Why would even a foreign store sell pirated material? When Carrefour first opened it used to sell real DVDs. But there was one problem: no one can really afford them. Tunisians do not have the money, for the most part, to buy DVDs priced at $15 and software marked higher. That is why the government tolerates piracy. The only alternative is denying people such services.

IT companies and Hollywood executives often state that piracy equals X and that then loss equals Y. But this is a gross fallacy. They look at, say, DVD piracy sells in Tunisia at 15 million copies a year. And then assume that at $15 a copy they are losing $225 million a year. But they are losing not even a fraction of that, because if the DVDs were not pirated Tunisians would not buy the real copy anyway. They only way they are going to purchase a movie is if it costs a dollar. Purchases of A at a set price cannot be arbitrary be made to be B at another price. Microsoft is another this illusion that if only the piracy would stop, it would make much more money off of Arabs.

And what about making money off of Arabs? Microsoft famously has a research center in Israel. Such companies are unworthy of Arab customers. I hope the douches at Microsoft lose sleep over piracy in the Arab world. And Arab unity should not be marshaled for the benefit of Microsoft, but for the benefit of Palestinians.