Microsoft’s official position on piracy has traditionally been one of zero tolerance, but Bill Gates acknowledged this reality to a group of students in 1998. “Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software,” said Gates to an audience at the University of Washington. “Someday they will, though, and as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”