Pardon, Is This Your File?

Teknogeek writes "The BSA says piracy is thriving. At least, according to this article. Note one interesting statistic: '...the group found that 57 percent of respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download. And 12 percent admitted to pirating software.' How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?" On a similar note, an Anonymous Coward writes: "MIT Technology Review reports on the process of scanning the entire internet for digital signatures matching copyrighted work (watermarking not required), and automatically emailing threats to the offenders and their ISPs."

Comments

BayTSP, Cyveillance

[Dr. Awktagon]

Yeah, those guys have been trawling the web for a while, looking for lord knows what. I have a ModRewrite rule in my httpd.conf that feeds them a bunch of garbage whenever they come by (thanks, Sugarplum). I ought to feed them some Jennifer Lopez files next time, see what happens...actually I should just firewall them away.

Cyveillance netblocks:
65.118.41.192 - 65.118.41.223
63.148.99.224 - 63.148.99.255

Anybody know what blocks BayTSP uses for their spiders?

Slashdot is right... go figure

[kaphka]

the group found that 57 percent of respondents never or seldom pay for copyrighted works they download. And 12 percent admitted to pirating software.' How much do you want to bet that 45 percent gap is freeware and/or open source?

I've been trying to fight the urge to post to Slashdot lately, but when I read that quote, I was all set to rant about it. Surely, by "copyrighted works" the researchers meant "unlicensed, commercial copyrighted works", and someone had stupidly or deceptively misinterpreted their point.

So, I checked the ZDNet article. It said the same thing. "Ah," I thought, "typical ZDNet incompetence, twisting the words of the press release."

Next, I checked the press release, and found the same claim yet again. Now I was starting to get worried, but at least the press release provided a link to the actual report (PDF). The report says,

A significant percentage of Internet users knowingly
violate copyright laws.
57 percent of downloaders either seldom
pay or never pay for the copyrighted software
they download. And 36 percent of all Internet users say it is not likely they will ever pay for software they download.
Of all Internet users, 12 percent admit to acquiring unlicensed commercial software.

There you have it. In the (distressingly significant) opinion of the Business Software Alliance, any individual who downloads a copy of Linux, Netscape Navigator, the latest Windows Service Pack, or any other software provided without charge, is "knowingly violating copyright law." That's terrifying.

(I apologize for taking so much time just to repeat what was said in the original submission, but accurate hyperbole is so rare on Slashdot that I thought it should be highlighted.)

As an aside, I'm actually very surprised that 41% of those surveyed indicated that they pay for downloaded software "most times" or "every time." I've been on the net since Pipeline NY (those were the days...), and I have paid for downloaded software perhaps 3 or 4 times in my life. Even in today's "internet economy," it's awfully hard to find someone who will sell you software without including an oversized box and ten marketing flyers. I strongly suspect that this survey was poorly designed, and that the results are garbage; however, that only makes the BSA's interpretation of it more disturbing.