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BSA IDC FUD
truthsearch writes "News.com.com is reporting that a 'study, commissioned by the BSA and conducted by IDC, found that in general, nations with the lowest piracy rates had the largest IT sectors. The study, which examined 57 countries, predicted that a 10-point reduction in the rate of piracy over four years could generate 1.5 million jobs and $64 billion taxes worldwide.' The BSA, er... Microsoft, will use this study to convince governments to crack down on piracy. 'Overall, the countries that have the poorest record of IP rights have slower rates of IT growth,' BSA CEO Robert Holleyman said. Oh, and the countries with the most oppression have had the slowest IT growth, but that can't be the cause, nah."
I know someone that was audited by the BSA and decided to fight it.
Basically they countered by stating they wanted full disclosure of
who reported them so as to determine the validity of the claim prior
to wasting internal resources and dollars. They also argued that
the reporting tools are a violation of privacy. Yes, they expected
them to place some software on their network which scans their
entire network not to mention each machine's registry. Third, they
also argued that even if they were in violation of license, the
license is between them and the vendor (after all, the license does
not allow for the BSA as having legal proxy interests) and unless
the vendor in questions decides that they'd like to personally
persue the issue, the BSA does not have legal authority or the
legal grounds to persue the action. Furthermore, they argued that
even if something odd was discovered and they lost, only the
government has the right to impose fines on legal matters as such
and they would be within their legal rights to simply purchase
any outstanding licenses or settle directly with the vendor in
question and completely dismiss the BSA altogether thereby
eliminating the need to pay any fines or added fees.
The Study..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
You know you are a geek when you understand a headline of all these acronyms... :\
...the BSA pointed out that countries with more relaxed Intellectual Property laws had higher child mortality rates. "The inference is clear", BSA CEO Robert Holleyman said, "Piracy kills babies".
Another classic example of confusing correlation with causality. Just because there is a correlation between the two, doesn't mean that one *causes* the other. They could just as easily *both* be affected by a third variable (average income? average levels of education? percentage of computer-using businesses?)
This is the kind of thing that gives statistics a bad name.
Here's another correlation distortion. People in the mid 1800's had an average lifespan of what? 45 years? Today's average lifespan is like 70 or something. Now, choose your data sets that way, and compare life expectancy of those people who have personal computers, and those that didn't (those from the 1800's). You'll find a *strong* correlation between PC use and life expectancy.
But it's clearly meaningless. The key factor here is obviously availability of health care. You can use this same trick to "prove" relationship between almost anything.
This study is clearly junk.
Tell the greedy politicians that they get something out of doing their job, which is supposed to be enforcing the law. $64B in taxes? That's a **great** way to ensure that jack-booted thugs with M-16s, AK-47s, MP5s or Styr-Augs (depending on the PD) bust down as many doors as possible to make sure that $64B is protected. That's of course assuming that eliminating piracy won't damage or destroy other sectors of the economy. People, $64B is ~$24B more than we spend on the insane WoD. I know that will get spread over many countries, but that's still a damn big incentive even if it's only an extra $5B to the general fund.
Imagine Palladium getting mandated to make this possible. No Macintosh anymore or similar platforms. Probably no WordPerfect either as it will cost Corel too much to get certified. Linux? Bye bye SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake, et al. It will be an industry dominated by a handful of giants. Our spineless, ignorant politicians have long ago forgotten that it is small and medium-sized business, not the giants, that run most of the economy. If those go under, unemployment will skyrocket, both parties will have egg on their faces and knowing America these days, we won't have a third party gaining power, we'll have 2 party weasles giving people heaping buckets full of Socialism.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
If piracy is high, their IT sector must be low
If an IT sector is low it must be a developing country
If it's a developing country then piracy will be high
thus...
If piracy is high, we impose trade sanctions
If trade sanctions are imposed, a developing country's economy will suffer
If people can't make enough money to buy software because their economy suffers they will not pirate software because they have learned their lesson.
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"The organization estimates that 40 percent of all software programs worldwide are pirated"
Is this?
A: Of all the software installed 40% is Warez
B: 40% of titles have been turned into Warez
I think that they mean A but I only find B to be believable.
That countries with high piracy rates were much more likely to be populated by people of color.
"Without immediate action to stop the spread of piracy, American citizen's will soon find their skin turning darker and darker," said BSA Spokeman Bubba Nalk. "We can already see the effects of software piracy on college campuses, as file swapping continues to turn white students into asians and even black students, as evidenced by the increased enrollment of students of color."
Mr. Nalk had no comment on whether software piracy also caused male college athletes to turn into women.
paintball
These numbers make it clear that countries investing in Free Software will have a clear competitive advantage when it comes to their IT sectors.
I started my own business recently. Not two weeks after I submitted the paperwork for a state business license, I received a mailing from the BSA that encouraged me to volunteer for an audit "just to make sure I didn't expose myself to the liability of unlicensed or improperly licensed software."
Uh huh. Riiiiiight. Seems that the state gub'ment sold a mailing list to these jackbooted thugs. You gimme any of that juris-my-diction crap, you can cram it up your ass.
Worse yet is if the BSA presents it's findings over a complimentary lunch where they refuse to feed you until you've heard their propaganda, er, um, presentation.
If only I could print my proposals to use non-MS products in the latest issue of Dumbass Boss Monthly (this month's feature: Shiny Things As Business Strategy), I'd have no trouble. Graphs, documentation and logic seem to hold no weight.
Do not touch -Willie
Think about it: countries like Sudan and Nigeria... who's gonna be pirating Windows XP when they don't have a computer to run it on?
Of course they have computers in Nigeria. How else is John Bako sending out his 419 emails to everyone?
>> in general, nations with the lowest piracy rates >> had the largest IT sectors
I think for people who don't think of software as work that puts bread on the table, software piracy feels less like stealing than it does for people who have had jobs writing software that paid their bills and bought food.
The same applies to the music industry, book publishing, or any other intellecutal property enterprise. Keep that in mind next time you are firing up your P2P client and downloading the latest "free" software or music or whatever. Remember that your "free" software has a cost - rather than being measured in a few dollars out of your wallet, this cost is measured in people's jobs.
The music/movie industry would have us believe that free distribution = end of profit.
They would seem to disagree:
"Publishers and authors: listen up! We know you may be concerned about all this book-sharing talk, and what it might do to your sales. You may be surprised to know that we have many, many publishers and authors that are big BookCrossing fans. They've seen the paradoxical value in encouraging the sharing of books. In fact, if one were to compare the number of people who buy books based on seeing book reviews here as the books change hands, to the number of people who actually find free books, we can assure you there are far more buyers than finders. This site is not about saving people money. Many of our members, in fact, have started purchasing two copies of every book they pick out, so they can keep one and release the other into the wild! Here's a good forum discussion re: authors, book sales, and bookcrossing that should alleviate any concerns about lost sales."
He would seem to disagree as well.
More here.
True... none have anything to do with piracy, but it would appear that free does not necessitate loss.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
This is a very flawed statistic. It reminds me of this study done by the tobacco companies once that said people who quit smoking are more likely to die earlier than people who don't quit. What they don't tell you is that people quit BECAUSE they're almost dead!!
Same goes for this study. There is a correlation between national wealth and anti-piracy. However this doesn't prove cause and effect. In fact there are many other factors that can easily play into this correlation. Nations that are rich are able to pay for software legitimately. Nations that are rich have the most to lose if copyrights are not enforced.
Think back to the last century. The U.S., being the young developing nation it was back then, didn't bother respecting any intellectual property rights themselves. Works from Britain were stolen, no royalties were paid, and our government didn't care much either. Just go do a search on google for what Charles Dickens thought about the U.S. when we stole his books/works and paid him nothing for it.
Fact is, developing nations NEED some latitude in terms of copyrights. Without it how are they going to develop? People in some of these countries can't even make enough $ in a year to pay for a crappy copy of Windows. The U.S. went through the same thing, and yet now we're calling the kettle black. This is hypocricy.
eTrade SUCKS