It would be so fun to be in IT in Russia right now. Software and film piracy is now completely legal because, if they aren’t selling it, it’s not theft. I could put pirated Windows on every workstation with no fear…
Yep, that's me.
> Software and film piracy is now completely legal
No it isn't, sadly. The one immediately good thing I had hoped to happen out of all this mess, sadly didn't happen. What a disappointment, really.
Complying to some arbitrary "copyright" rules, enforced by enemy state and lobbied by corporations, that had practically bought "rights" to all the human culture they could get their hands on (especially if they are refusing to license!) is completely ridiculous and fucking stupid.
In the current political situation at least they could have legalised SciHub - they couldn't even do that! That's just weak.
Office 365 cancellations are another story. Lots of movement to onprem or relocations of IT abroad are in progress right now. Yandex for example is moving part of it’s operations to Israel.
I'm in EU, not in Russia and still pirate stuff. Granted, it's all for private use.
I think what you mean is that now companies in Russia are free to pirate everything for professional/corporate use as well.
And you would also get the exit ban. FYI, people who worked for Russian biggest banks are now banned from leaving the country, and that is not only IT, real bankers are banned from leaving as well.
Owners of biggest commercial enterprises, and their children were also forbidden from leaving.
Russian FOREX, and crossborder transactions are nominally still open, but any outgoing transaction over $10,000 triggers an automatic account freeze.
People are also unable to sell their property. There is no official ban, but the necessary paperwork for property sale is impossible to do now.
Stock market is bust, but brokerages are also effectively shut down without declaring it publicly. Dividends are frozen because the electronic system controlling dividend transactions simply been physically switched off for months.
Russian customs enforcement always been draconian, but now it went into total overdrive, with Russia-Kazakhstan border seeing kilometres long queues because now 100% of all cars, and cargo goes through full search. People been trying to save their last money by trying to get it over the border as gold bars, only to have them seized with zero paperwork.