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Linux "is not piracy" Says Microsoft Lawyer
dipfan writes "Further to this Slashdot piece on the activities of the Business Software Alliance, the BBC reports on a European conference on piracy organised by the BSA. The good news is even Microsoft distinguishes between open source software and piracy; it quotes Microsoft's top in-house lawyer Brad Smith as saying: 'Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.' The rest of the article is the usual panic-attack about the size of software piracy in general, and how this is holding back the software industry in Eastern Europe, according to Brad. Although the article notes the irony that despite all the piracy, software sales are forecast to grow from $50 billion in 2000 to about $90 billion by 2005."
I heard a radio commercial for the Business Software Aliance this morning while driving into work. This was a first in the Jacksonville, Florida area. I suppose the BSA will start harassing businesses in this area now.
No matter where you go... there you are.
I can do a search for "warez" right now and probably come up with at least a million sites. These guys are so full of shit it should be criminal. They are deliberately misleading people about this issue. So, is anyone standing up to call them on it? Who has the clout to be heard there?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You've got that backwards. It is only legal to copy a copyrighted work (other than for fair use) if you've been specifically granted that right by a license (e.g. the GPL). (IANAL)
The default under copyright law is to forbid copying; most shrink-wrap "licenses" try to restrict your rights beyond the ordinary powers of copyright.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
"Look at the Brain on Brad!"
Smith graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, where he received the Class of 1901 Medal, the Dewitt Clinton Poole Memorial Prize, and the Harold Willis Dodds Achievement Award, the highest award given to a graduating senior at commencement. He was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar at the Columbia University School of Law, where he received the David M. Berger Memorial Award. He also studied international law and economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He has written numerous articles regarding international intellectual property and electronic commerce issues and has served as a lecturer at the Hague Academy of International Law.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Ok, we're going to take words away from you now, because they mean things, and you don't want to acknowledge that. We're going to use math instead. You can't argue with math unless it's added up wrong. Here we go.
Software company 'A' sells a piece of software for $159.95. User 'Bob' doesn't have $159.95 to spend on software. Now, if we take the amount of money that company 'A' has when 'Bob' doesn't buy the software, and subtract it from the amount of money that the company 'A' has when 'Bob' pirates the software we get the indisputably correct amount of money that company 'A' has lost from 'Bob's piracy. I hope you can add, because here we go:
$0 - $0 = $0.
That's right, the company lost $0. $0. That's it, just $0.
I'm a professional software developer. That's what I do for a living. I fully understand that software piracy is bad, but to say that every pirated copy is a loss of money is just a lie. Some are, some aren't. I just showed you the math to prove it. Stop spreading you BSA marketing department lies.
If you want people to listen to you, more importantly if you want to influence people, then you have to tell the truth. People aren't stupid, and they can tell when you are lying to them. If you want to convince people to stop pirating software, you will have to find honest arguments, and you should know that there are many of them. Even 'Bob' the hypothetical software pirate can add, so your arguement won't work on him.
it takes an honest effort and lots of digging to come up with sites that actually have anything
:-)
This is true for the web, but there are other ways that require much less effort... *cough* IRC *cough*