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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."
Linux is a way of developing software...
And all this time I was under the impression that Linux was an operating system kernel!
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.
Ideas developed and shared undermine Intellectual Property. i.e. If you invented a better moustrap and GPL'd the design, then MSFT wouldn't be able get a patent on it, and thus license for big fees or lock any other developer or competitor out.
Having to include source to something they didn't invent and can't get along without is their problem and, like any reasonable minded person, don't want problems. They like to keep it simple, by owning or having license agreements on IP.
How anyone actually associates Linux with Piracy is beyond me and reflective of a lack of understanding the spirit of MSFT's gripes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"piracy is copying."
So 18th century pirates just boarded your ship, copied everything, and left?
Is it just me or does this contradict things?
They tell us we can't buy machines without an OS. Then they say that we're not allowed to remove the OS. Oh, and we can't give away the machine without a Microsoft OS either.
Oh, and you can be sure that they think that a machine with Linux preinstalled is an OS-free machine.
These guys play both sides so much you'd swear they were U.S. negotiators in the Middle East. Well, granted, Microsoft has been more successful. Bill Gates to solve the crisis in the West Bank???
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
#include "StandardWhineAboutExpensiveSoftware.h"
#include "WhineAboutOnlyUsingItOnce.h"
#include "RantAboutNeedingPhotoshopInsteadOfGimp.h"
etc...
Of course Linux isn't piracy. It would be extraordinarily difficult for me to pirate RedHat when I can get it legally from their website.
This is another one of those "We'll look like we're compromising on this minor point so that people can buy into our other major point" things. Linux may not be piracy, but it is viral and anti-capitalist and bad for consumers because it's supported by hobbyists with PHDs in CS rather than a major company whose tech support knows as much as their average supportee (is that a word?).
What is the market for Linux like in Europe? Does M$ have any more reason to be worried over there than they do here?
(sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm an American so I have no clue what goes on outside of my own country)
No... Piracy should be defined as 'breaking the license the software was issued under'.
If they get away with defining 'piracy'=='copying', even in people's perceptions, the main distribution method of linux will be severely hampered. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone receive a burnt CD with 'Red Hat xx' scribbled with a magic marker, and they ask something like, "is this legal?". It just 'feels' like you are doing something dirty.
It is only illegal to copy it if you have specifically given up that right. As the GPL says, "Most lices are created with the purpose of taking away your rights..."
And wow, it sure took them a long time to figure out the "codeword" for pirated software :)
Ceci n'est pas un post
If anything, I believe piracy has progressed the software industry there, atleast the MS-centric part of it. If they didn't have illegal copies of Windows and VC++ to develop on, there is no way they'd be able to afford the real thing. So in a way, pirated software helps Microsoft, because then more people are able to develop Windows applications.
Sheesh. Are there any insulting comparisons Microsoft hasn't yet made?
49 20 68 61 76 65 20 74 6F 6F 20 6D 75 63 68 20 66 72 65 65 20 74 69 6D 65 2E
The problem is that you have software like Napster that represents the freeloader movement getting confused with the free software movement. Popular websites like slashdot do more to hurt than to help with this problem. A lot of people are under the false impression that Linux and open source are about "free beer", and if you believe that, then it's not an enormous stretch to conclude that Linux is about piracy.
Lots of money will continue to be made in software simply because piracy is a pain in the tuckus. If you come right down to it, most software hasn't really gotten that much more expensive over the years.
;-)
Take games for example. They still usually cost around $50 bucks, just like they have for years. I pay $50 dollars for my tax program every year now because, after all, what's $50 bucks? 10 years ago it cost the same and we used to get 5 people together and pay $10 bucks each. Now we just buy it because it's more of a nuisance to pirate than it is to just pony up the cash.
Games are relatively cheap too. If you use a pirated version, half the time you're having problems like, "I need the latest 1.09 patch for such and such bug/feature but it breaks my 1.07 pirated no-cd version". It's just easier to buy it than it is to go surfing warez sites/kazaa, etc. My time is more valuable than that.....surfing for warez takes time away from gaming.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
In other news Micro$oft spokesman says "we magnanimously concede that breathing oxygen is not, in and of itself, stealing from us".
To me, the big brotherish quote was:
"Criminal organisations can sell software direct, as well as through retail channels," said Symantec lawyer Art Courville. "So, it is harder to monitor."
yep- can't have that ol' free market in the way, somebody might be doing something unlawful
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
The remark about piracy holding Eastern Europe back is partially right. In Russia, Ukraine and other states you can pick up just about any software for next to nothing. Imagine paying $1.80US for Windows XP Professional? The piracy rings there are so good you get it fully cracked, you get it in nice packaging and if you need help they can sell you a ton of books that have been scanned into PDF format also on CD.
The problem isn't piracy. It is a lack of respect or even awareness of Intellectual Property in my opinion. There is no respect for it at all, it seems, in these countries. Their legislatures are just now starting to examine laws concerning it. I am not sure which industry is bigger: China's piracy rings or Russia's. In China the piracy goes to aid specific Red Army units (in fact the rings are allegedly controled by Army Generals).
It is an interesting problem. While we want to business with these countries, lack of protections makes it nearly impossible. At least under the rules and structure of Capitalism. While those rules can lead to our current situation where we have an agressively bad and dangerous monopoly controlled by Bill Gates, they generally are good and promote sane business practices. My hope is that Eastern Europe reforms. With China, I don't see and end coming to their ways of doing business.
Well even the GPL license states that you can't just copy the software without agreeing to the license agreement, and so it's pretty safe to assume that unless you know otherwise that it's "piracy" to just copy the software. That's true for both "commercial" and "free" software - you need to agree to the license (including paying any fees etc.) to be able to copy the software legally. As most "non-computer" people have little idea about how their software is actually licensed, it's probably fair to assume they don't know the difference between free software and pirated software. We might not like that level of ignorance, but I suspect it's true.
Sig is taking a break!
Why do they insist on equating an illegal copy with a stolen copy. The "thief" in the stolen copy case has not deprived the owner of the copyright of anything, the victim still has everything he had before the "theft"
Here we go - in very tiny words for you, ok?
You go into a store. Software Product A is sitting on the shelf for $10.
You go around to your friend's house. Software Product A is copied to you for free.
Producer of Software Product A has now lost a $10 sale.
Whether you would have bought it for $10 or not is irrelevant - you made a copy, so it obviously has value to you.
Therefore, you are depriving the software company of their profit on that product.
If you disagree with this, then fine, disagree with the software company too - and DON'T USE or COPY THEIR PRODUCT.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
This is probably off topic, but I feel the need to share it.
It is easy for those of us hip to the open source movement to laugh at this crap from MS, even though we know that some end users and such might be taken in by it. But the depths to which MS FUD penetrates the general IT community is bloody incredible to me.
Yesterday I was talking with a mid-level QA engineer from Apple. This guy is working on a very complex product. He knows how to code.
We start talking about software development, and I mention some things I am working on, mostly centered on Linux. At which point he says:
"That's cool, but anything you do on Linux you would have to give away for free, right?"
Contrary to what everyone is thinking, this guy isn't stupid. He isn't even technically inept. He works on a complex project and knows what he is doing in his problem domain.
Anything that MS might say about Linux and open source that isn't totally negative should be lauded, because a LOT more people than some of us realize, people we think should know better, apparently are buying pretty much everything MS is trying to spread about open source and Linux.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
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
It took them a whole day?
Geez. A quick Google search on 'warez' yields not merely a million, but 4,290,000 sites!
Search took 0.04 seconds. How much are they paying these guys?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
:)
I assume here they are referring to "warez". And yes, you will get a LOT of hits if you put that into a search engine. However, before you get TOO excited about it, understand that 99 times out of 100, you're more likely to find porn than pirated software if you actually visit any of those sites. Its a completely meaningless association.
The majority of "warez" trading is done through IRC or usenet. Yet those who are striving to rid the internet of piracy rarely mention these treasure troves. Certainly they get mentioned as the breeding ground for evil "hackers" and for child porn distribution, but as far as piracy goes, they tend to stay rather mum about it.
Could it be that their only real mission is one of sensationalism? They know for a fact that the average clueless newbie will do a hunt for pirated software on the web (because as far as they know, the web IS the internet), and will be disillusioned by all the porn websites, banners, and popups that they will figure its more trouble than its worth. They might trade with their friends and download some mp3's off Morpheus, but that will be the limit of their piracy activities.
However, if lots of news articles spent a great deal of time complaining about the rampant piracy on IRC and usenet and other places, then that clueless newbie might actually decide for once that a clue isn't such a bad thing and venture into that world. "What do you mean that IE can't go there???" But once entrenched in that world, they'll be very difficult to "retrain".
The public at large has been convinced by and large that child pornography and hacking are indeed "Bad things (tm)" and will probably avoid those places that distribute them. But software piracy hasn't reached that degree of evil in most people's eyes. So they will to some small degree actually seek it out. And deep down, there's probably an even bigger fear. Their preverbial sheep might stumble across something dangerous. "What's this here linux thing all about???"
ok. Fine. Mod me down.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Comments like yours do more to hurt than to help with this problem.
/. as the root of all evil then at least explain yourself.
/. or knows what open source is, doesn't know that Linux is an OS and not an idea or an action.
Ok, if you're going to mark
Secondly, Yes, a lot of people are under the impression that open source means "free as in beer" because it DOES! Look at Freshmeat or SourceForge and try to find some pay products. The percentage probably can't get measures in whole numbers.
Lastly, who the hell that reads
"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.
Or shall we patent/copyright "a method for cleaning windows?"
I believe Linus holds the trademark on "Linux," and I've used it to clean Windows off of several systems.
Nope, no sig
We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software
Downright misleading. Search for "warez", get a million hits, trumpet about how software is being stolen. "We can't estimate...but we found". If you can't estimate it, why are you spitting out these meaningless figures, other than to feed the press? I think the best counterclaim would be to have people follow the top, say, hundred links and see what percentage of those pages *actually* contain links to pirated files. Be interesting, actually.
There are legitimate numbers that could have been given. The number of Hotline servers serving files containing given strings. The percentage of computers without licenses found when MS audits are conducted. The "number of times transferred" statistic some IRC file serving bots put out. Number of napster or gnutella hits for a search for the name of a piece of software. Call me naive, but it seems that if piracy is as big a problem as the BSA is telling everyone, they should be able to come up with some meaningful statistics.
I also love the BSA's emphasis of organized crime. Most software is pirated through organized crime? Please. Oh, maybe in China or Russia, and I don't live in eastern Europe, so I can't really say there. But in the US (and, I would assume, western Europe), the BSA likes holding up the Mafia on one hand and asking legislators "Don't you want to stop this?" Most software pirated in the US is from casual copying, end of story.
Now, all this doesn't mean that piracy isn't a real, legitimate problem. But that release has as much spin on it as I've ever seen.
As for the token handed to Linux, I don't know why that was in there, unless it was to try to split up the groups of people (pirates, OSS folks) who don't really approve of the BSA.
I don't know if Microsoft is evil, but a search for "microsoft evil" on google spits out a quarter million results...:-)
May we never see th
"The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost $3bn to pirates."
I am always curious where they actually come up with these numbers. Some kid in his basement downloading a $3,000 software package hasn't actually cost the industry anything b/c he wouldn't have bought it anyway. Now if a company like IBM bought 1 copy of office and installed on every corporate desktop then I think that is a real problem. The real question is how many companys are really in gross violations of the current laws?
You go into a store. Software Product A is sitting on the shelf for $10.
You decide that Product A isn't worth $10 to you. (The step you missed)
You go around to your friend's house. Software Product A is copied to you for free.
Producer of Software Product A has now lost a $10 sale.
Oops, except that the producer wouldn't have had that sale anyway. So while the revenue lost to unauthorized redistribution is probably non-zero, it is ceratinly not the total retail value of the number of unauthorized copies.
Nope, no sig
- A vegitable
- An animal
- A mineral
- A verb (although I have heard people say "let's linux this project," which made me want to slap them)
- A birthcontrol device (well, arguably)
- A form of martial arts
- A cure for the common cold
- A paint remover
- A shoe manufacturer
- A religion (arguably)
etc..._______
2B1ASK1
Why does the Topic say the lawyer said "is not piracy" when the text of the submission does not use these words? In fact, the text says: "Brad Smith as saying: 'Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.'"
Could be just me, but I don't see the words "is not piracy" in there. We couldn't be bothered to use the actual words I suppose?
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
"A healthy market leads to more attractive prices for consumers".
By this standard, I suppose the music industry and (perhaps to a lesser extent) the software industry are "unhealthy". In fact, this makes piracy look pretty attractive, unless these "attractive prices" are cheaper than "free".
Obviously, the reason we have piracy is *because* the current prices aren't "more attractive". Also, not everyone who pirates a program really needs it, especially not for the price that it is selling at.
This goes double for programs that have free alternatives; most people don't really need that new copy of Photoshop 6, but why bother learning about The Gimp when you can just pirate the industry standard? Actually, bundling free alternatives to commercial software would be a good way to decrease piracy, but I doubt that most companies would agree to this, because it might also decrease *SALES*, which is all they really care about. They don't care about their customers, just their money...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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 $0.
I'm a professional software developer. That's what I do for a living. I fully understand that software piracy is bad, but to say that every pirated copy is a loss of money is just a lie. Some are, some aren't. I just showed you the math to prove it. Stop spreading you BSA marketing department lies.
If you want people to listen to you, more importantly if you want to influence people, then you have to tell the truth. People aren't stupid, and they can tell when you are lying to them. If you want to convince people to stop pirating software, you will have to find honest arguments, and you should know that there are many of them. Even 'Bob' the hypothetical software pirate can add, so your arguement won't work on him.
Micro$oft has a monopoly. What's worse is they use those powers regularly in a way that is not productive to the consumer or, IMO, the computer industry. However, /. cannot get into the belief that software piracy is *not* a bad thing. Especially when it is commercial piracy (shrink wrapping copied/conterfeit products). The observation that sales are increasing has nothing to do with whether piracy is good/bad or affecting/not affecting the market.
/. community gets up in arms over gpl violations but thinks piracy against the evil empire is somehow less bad. There are better ways to work for a better (more fair) computer industry.
I'm surprised that the
-Sean
If it's not worth $10 to you, why are you making a copy? What possible value could that copy have to you?
Clearly, less than $10, but more than nothing. But if I have already decided not to pay for a copy of the software, then logically no action on my part can possibly lose the firm in question a sale. This is self-evidently true. Of course, it depends on whether I would have bought a copy if I was unable to make a copy illegally.
I bet you go to car dealerships and drive cars off the lot that are 'too expensive' for you too.
An imbecilic analogy. If someone steals a car, someone loses a car: a zero-sum game. If, however, someone copies information, the original copy still exists.
Whatever. I thought Adam Waring was funnier anyway.
They [Redhat et al.] provide the source, but not the actual ISOs or other form of download.
You sure about that?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
"Say it again and I'll Be you, for jibbity's sake!"
Actually, I'd rather be Bill Gates, if only for the money...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Actually, I'd rather be Bill Gates, if only for the money...
promise me you'll spend some of that money on a decent haircut..
...in other news, Microsoft released a statement which said that the Pope is Catholic...
Oh, this is just too good.
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
I believe the "code word" is WAREZ and I believe that the inference was that because there are a lot of sites advertising "WAREZ" there must be a lot of piracy.
Yes, there are an awful lot of sites that try to sucker people in by having "WAREZ" in their site name. Most of these sites have a lot of shareware not actual pirated software. So the inference is total crap. Not that there isn't a lot of piracy just that the hit count for "WAREZ" is no proof of it.
"For an industry that commits millions of pounds to research and development, and that contributes six times as much to Europe's GDP as the consumer goods industry, the levels are unacceptable, the BSA says. "
I thought they just said that "We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net..." If so, how do the know that "the levels are unacceptable?"
"That is about to change as the European Commission puts into force a directive intended to harmonise civil laws governing how courts deal with cases involving intellectual property"
Software piracy is already illegal. So what do they want to do? Make it REALLY, REALLY illegal?
"There is also work to be done on educating the public about the importance of intellectual property, especially as a web counter-culture advocating free software, such as music downloads, continues to grow."
Oh, so now we get to the crux of the matter. We're back on the "Kill Mp3s" track again. They want laws to take away fair use so that they can increase corporate profits.
"Open source software such as Linux is not seen as a threat to the work the BSA is doing, however."
Then why mention it? "Look! Your shoe is untied!"
"Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying," said Microsoft's Brad Smith.
Wrong again Bozo. Linux is an operating system. Someday Microsoft should try to create one.
"He does believe that stopping the pirates could have a dramatic effect on the current pricing of software, however."
And why does he bundle the discussion of Linux in with the discussion of piracy? He's not using subtle association techniques is he?
"As the legal market grows, there is more investment in new products and enhanced competition. A healthy market leads to more attractive prices for consumers," he said.
So does the open source movement. You can't get a better price than free. The only problem that I see with open source is that society as a whole isn't mature enough to break out of the "take what you can get and give back nothing" attitude. We need to learn to do a better job of voluntarily supporting open source companies.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Actually, Microsoft has every right to dislike its greatest threat.
The Linux kernal is more than just a better mouse trap. Its free software.
I believe we are seeing the beginnings of the third and last stage of software. An age where software is largely mutually beneficial to everyone. Much as math and sciences are today and have been for a long time now.
This stage is an unfortunate stage for software businesses. Because they can not continue to exist.
And its not just the threat of GNU and the large body of free software either. Its economics. Even though software isn't scarce, lets assume it is for benefit of argument.
What do you do when everyone has the software they need? This is the burden Microsoft has had for a while. So they play every trick in the book. Changing file formats -- more restrictive licensing -- regular upgrades -- huge marketing -- and the creation of new technologies. The hope is to obsolete the previous version of software.
Problem is that this provides almost zero benefit for the customer. Sure -- every so often someone gets a fringe benefit from a new technology. But usually, people are happy with the software they have now.
So, in economics, if the customer gets no benefit from a product, they won't buy it--right? And thats the future as I see it. "Piracy" is the least of their worries. Their business model is about to collapse upon itself.
And the GNU/Linux operating system represents this collapse all too vividly. Microsoft, there is no hope for you.
The funny thing is that so many of the fears of a World Government were that it would come from quasi-socialistic NGO's. But here, the multinationals are coming in and dictating the property model for other countries to use. What if a nation doesn't want to recognize IP as property? What does it cost Microsoft if an entire nation opts out? After all, most Russians and Ukrainians probably aren't getting *any* real benefit from intellectual property laws - how much Russian or Ukrainian-owned software do *you* use? (US companies employing coding sweatshops doesn't count - after all, the IP is owned and enforced in the US.)
it sounds like socialism to the majority of people in the U.S. at least. It probably also sounds like that to those in the EU regimes that are socialists only so far as they can use socialist economics to control the lower and middle classes (ie the aristocrats that want to tax you and me 60-80% but want their yacts and porsches). And yes, I know socialism is not really the dirty word in Europe that it is in the US, but it can still influence center, right wing and the equivalent (if they even exist in Europe) of libertarians. Therefore insinuating a socialist connection with OSS can have an effective propaganda effect.
the article is one of those "got press release, changed a few words, printed it" pieces of "journalism". here's what I wrote to BBC in reply:
1 951000/1951231.stm
Dear Jane Wakefield,
In the article titled "Net pirates 'threaten software industry'", posted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_
on Monday, 29 April, 2002, 07:52 GMT 08:52 UK, you write down a few items that I don't consider to be entirely correct, and even more that are very one-sided.
Allow me to comment on some of these items:
> The warning was issued at a conference, organised by the Business
> Software Alliance (BSA), which attracted delegates from firms such as
> Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Symantec.
This sounds like an accomplishment with credits to the BSA, except that the BSA is funded by the firms mentioned, especially Microsoft. Once you check the speakers list against the BSA membership list, you realize that what appears to be a conference is, in fact, a PR meeting.
Pointing this out to the reader would have enabled him to take the points made by these "delegates" with the grain of salt they deserve.
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost
> $3bn to pirates.
I have always been interested in finding out just how BSA and other "independent" researchers arrive at these figures. They don't tell. Any credible claim should name its sources, shouldn't it?
> This figure is thought to be only a tiny fraction of the amount of
> piracy that is going on every day on the internet.
If I interpret "tiny fraction" as less than 10%, I'm at $30bn EVERY DAY, or about 11 trillion per year. The GDP of the UK in 2000 was $1.36 trillion. So these people are telling you that internet piracy is a business 10 times the size of the whole UK economy?
Obviously that is, if you excuse the word, bullshit. The sentence does, however, create the impression that internet piracy is unbelievably huge.
Even so, $30bn is more than Microsoft's worldwide net profits, and a considerable percentage of the total net earnings of europe's software industry. A claim of this size better be substantiated by serious facts and sources. Where are they?
> "We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we
> found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for
> pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
One of the "codenames" is "warez" and does indeed return about 4,230,000 hits when put into google.
However, what kind of point does that make? "Buckingham Palace" returns 99,300 hits, but as far as I am aware, there is only one.
More to the point, a search engine just tells you how many sites mention a given topic. Ironically, the BSA's own websites, both at bsa.org and national sites such as bsa.de or bsa.org.tr appear in the above-mentioned search for "warez", because they use the "bad word". A majority of the "real" warez sites are just traps with pornographic advertisement. A little research would have taken an hour or two and been quite revealing.
Warez sites are very real. The BSA, however, having an agenda, is greatly exagerating both their number and capabilities.
Finally, here are a few choice quotes that should have really ticked you off to the fact that the figures are made up:
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe
> lost $3bn to pirates.
[...]
> Europe has a greater rate of piracy than the US - around 34%
[...]
> It is forecast to grow from £35bn in 2000
Maybe math works differently in america, but even without a calculator I can see that $3bn isn't 34% of $50bn.
It sorries me when I see journalists lifting whole articles almost verbatim out of corporate press releases. It is especially not the kind of reporting I expect from a respectable news source like BBC.
For the record, I am a computer security professional with a telco company. I have been working professionally on the internet for over 5 years, and I have seen the warez scene both from inside (when I was a teenager) and from the outside now that I deal with people abusing our computer resources for these purposes or help the law enforcement agencies to track criminals through our systems.
Piracy is real, no question about it. The BSA, however, justifies its very existence by a gross exageration of the facts, and as a very interested party should not be believed too much.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's easy. Same way we associate "drugs" and "bad". It's all down to an understanding of the way the human brain interprets repitition, association, emphasis and repitition:
Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is [mumble] software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is [mumble] software [mumble] piracy [mumble] copying.
Linux is [mumble mumble] piracy.
Linux is piracy.
Linux is piracy.
LINUX is PIRACY.
Incidentally, I am not - repeat NOT - trying to be cute or funny here. Microsoft are mentioning Linux and piracy in the same sentence because they are laying the foundations for Joe Reader to imagine an association. Expect to see a lot more of this in the future, especially once they figure out whether they want to demonise specifically Linux, the GPL, or Open Source in general.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.