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BSA Creates Piracy Statistics
JakiChan writes "According to this story on Yahoo! news the BSA commissioned a study that decided that 39% of all business software is pirated, down from 40%. The decline is attributed to the BSA's enforcement techniques. 'The piracy rate was calculated by comparing the researchers' estimates on demand with data on actual software sales.'" In other words, some guys sat in a room and decided that people probably wanted to buy ten copies of software, but only five were sold, so the piracy rate must therefore be 50%. By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated.
"And for software, because every PC is a software copying machine, since inception we have had a problem."
He has a point, but it must be strange looking around and having a paradigm of fear/distrust spin on what he sees.
Reminds me of this saying "If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets".
The other subjective view is where they attribute the reported 1% decline to their own efforts. Sounds more like either statistical fluctuation or just a noisy unstable way of measuring year to year.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
I think he means that a lot of people WANT ocean-front homes, but few are SOLD. He's just trying to apply his logic in a wierd way.
In effect, their piracy statistic is more made-up than most statistics, since they're just making up a number of how much pirated software is out there based on what they *think* would have sold.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
DING DING DING DING DING DING
Basically "a couple million people WANT an ocean-front house, but only a handfull have been sold." Compared to "hundreds of thousands of people WANT MS OFFICE, but only a hundred copies were sold, so the other copies MUST be pirated just because the people wanted them".
They don't take into account that they really don't know if those other hundreds of thousands of people actually HAVE a copy of MS OFFICE.
got it?
good.
Sheesh...people estimating demand and then comparing it to actual sales?!? Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
The BSA employs the time-honoured, scientifically-based, statistically-sound method of throwing a 100 sided die and then consulting a magic 8-ball to verify accuracy.
the actual white paper is here
It starts from the premise of looking at software industry growth rates from 1996 to 2001 and predicting that even without piracy reduction, the growth of the software industry would be *greater* (in percentage terms) from 2002 to 2006.
Obviously after the bubble burst the IDC guys spent the last of their stock earnings on crack.
Notice that they didn't say it decreased a lot, there's still much more work in the Fight Against Piracy, so please keep funding us, Mr. Gates.
... same Windows 95 Key used on 2 machines, Office installed on 3 machines from the same CD set... (Mind you these people are STILL running office 97 and are very happy with it.. something that must royally piss off microsoft.)
This is the funny part. in the super gigantic corperation I work for/in if such a statistic were real I would see a part of it. over the past 2 years I preformed 2 software audits at random. my first software audit was the first in this state that anyone can remember. and I checked both currentl computers and the closet full of discarded ones that supposedly had "Comapny secrets" on them deemed by some idiot CIO...
Other than the once in a while violation of winzip being past it's 30 days and no registration key I found almost no software copyright violations. one person had on one of the really old machines a copy of claris works from home. everything else met our licensing.
So, the BSA IS a worthless entitity... their wild-ass guess... err.. estimate... is so far off they stink. Yes I know that smaller shops probably have a much higher level of copyright violation, but in my time as a freelance consultant to many small machine shops, accounting firms, and Credit Unions I only saw a small amount such as
that I was able to correct for the owners of the companies for less than $1000.00 (old software is dirt cheap if you know where to buy the used copies..)
I routenely tell all my clients that if they get a BSA letter, they call ME first their lawyer second and third, throw it in the trash with the rest of the useless junk mail.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://www.bsa.org/usa/press/newsreleases//2003-06 -03.1628.phtml
What you just said pretty much sums up the way Adobe protects it's software. Adobe isn't stupid, and they sue the pants off anyone who treads on them; however Photoshop, AFX, Illustrator, and Premier have the one of the easiest products the pirate since I can remember. Why.. like you said.. people try it, they love it, one day they buy it for business use.
Better: Infinity, not being a number, cannot divide any other number, so "one divided by infinity" is a meaningless statement.
;-)
Your statement would be better rendered "1 divided by x as x goes to infinity limits to zero." (I'd like to write the actual symbols because I've heard the limit symbol said a couple of different ways; that's my personal preference.)
If you want to get all mathematical in someone's face, do it right.
BSA's whole premise for existence is that there is rampant piracy going on. They'd never admit that the piracy rate was more like 1-2%, because the companies that fund the BSA would consider that "acceptable" and realize that the BSA exists only to pay for itself. The BSA needs to be a FUD-monger to ensure it's own existence.
The BSA would HATE for strong copy protection to be enforced, because it would shrivel up and die shortly thereafter. If the software vendors would release crippleware versions of their products for folks to try, sales would increase and the BSA would probably die off. Sounds like a deal.
Very true, a business that can only afford 1 copy (to share among 5 PC) would probably go "open source" if they would suddenly be forced to pay for 5 copies.
In late 80's I heard some "gamming industry anti-piracy group" state that without pirating, the games could sell for 5-10$ instead of the current 60-80$. In early 90's games started to be sold only on CDs. The CD-Writers where still several thousands, and the software piracy went down to almost nothing.
What happened when piracy went down? The prices stayed the same. 99% of the people I knew that installed copies simply stop installing and thus stop using the applications. They never really needed it in the first place. They installed it "just in case", for bragging right (mostly) or to consult files created by others.
The piracy numbers are BS. True that software business would be incredibly rich if all users would pay, but if forced to pay they would loose the vast majority (90% up?) of their "pirate" users!
>>> Same thing with movies and MP3s... I've downloaded some stuff for free that no way in hell I would have EVER forked over a nickle to buy
In my case, it's mostly foreign or specialized movies I can't get in my area. I rarely pay more than 15$ for a DVD, so I can D/L the movie and wait for the 10-15$ bargain bin. I don't feel bad about it. 10-15 is just what I am ready to pay.
It turns out the BSA is spreading their nonsense around the world.
I just read a hungarian online newspaper, and BSA Hungary states a drop from 49% to 45% over there.
-Tomaj