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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.
79% of all statistics are made up on the spot. My math professor always said so, so it must be true.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
"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
A meaningless statistic or the (Government/Big Business/Your Boss) believing it?
__________
Love conquers all... except CANCER
By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated Yarrr. There be many a pirate on the high seas.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Who's smoking crack here? There's no way to calculate how many times I downloaded Bryce off Kazaa or something like that, piracy is un-measurable!
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Otherwise the BSA is a worthless entity. 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. Eventually they'll stamp out piracy, honest, so can they please have another 100 million USD?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They like to make up numbers. Same as "one pirated song costs us $X amount of dollars". I wonder how much of that piracy is highly priced productivity tools - Photoshop, Flash, 3DSMax, Visual Studio, etc etc, stuff that people can't really afford, so they are technically losing money, since it wouldn't have been bought in the first place.
I disagree - my statistics show that only 39% of /. trolls think that *BSD IS DYING, compared with 40% last year, therefore *BSD IS LESS DEAD that it was last year.
Oh, and for "statistics" read "numbers that I pulled out of my ass
All companies should pirate more software, to increase profit margins by keeping overhead costs down. Soon, all companies will be as successful as other honest firms such as Enron.
Dude, where's my packet?
Wouldn't 1% be within the margin of error? Especially since 39% is only an estimate[1]. For all we know, it actually went up 1%.
[1] The article says: "The study estimates that 39 percent of business software products in use last year were not legally obtained"
....it's only 12%, but some of the were real big percents.
I've come to believe that you can learn a lot about a person or organization based upon their treatment of others. If one's mind is a world of sexual perversion, one sees child pornography in the innocent bathtime photos parents take of their kids. If one's mind is a prime example of a money-grubbing, to-hell-with-everyone-else attitude, one sees piracy in every PC.
In this case, it's apparent that the BSA and it's leaders are rapacious, greedy, amoral takers of other people's goods. They should be put away for their own safety and ours.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
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.
If they did their stats similar to the stats over at distributed.net I think it would be alot more accurate. And it would also spur competition amongst the piraters. I think it would be cool to see who could pirate the most.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I would like to apologise for the heinous crime of software copying. I promise to mend my ways and return to a good pirate lifestyle of murder, rape and pilage on the high seas
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Couldn't piracy also have fallen because of the sharp rise of open source software?
I don't steal things, I just borrow them from strangers for as long as I need them. The eyepatch is purely for aesthetic reasons....
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
"...ethically and morally right..."
*cough*
I'm sorry?
If i go to the trouble to write software, and choose not to release it under a public license, what the hell gives you the right to rip me off?
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.
What of software that is released in the free software market? Wouldn't increased free software usage also decrease the overall percentage? Oh wait, I'm sure they didn't bother checking free software usage so they can keep piracy percentages at a relatively similar number to before the inception and mass utilization of free software. When someone downloads an average linux distribution, how many packages of free software do they get? That's certainly got to be adding to the numbers and decreasing the overall true number of piracy (i.e. pirated copies of software/all copies of software used). I'm sure they consider the usage of single-license software on more than one machine pirating, so this falls under "all copies of software used".
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
. . .but it seems to me that in any proper study you make reference to margins of error (which the Yahoo! story didn't mention), and I find it hard to believe that the reported 1% drop falls outside the margin of error.
This is all really silly.
So with all the activation technology they've introduced, amnesties and what not, all they could manage was a 1% reduction? Is it just me, or does this seem to suggest that their efforts are pointless, and are probably a huge waste of effort and money for both the developers and the end users?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
is that US congress will use this kind of stuff to make policies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
Because the houses are on the Ocean, Pirates have access to them for Pirating. You would think Pirates would like to Pirate all the homes they can, but they can only get to 1 out of every 100 homes to pirate. But because they wanted to get to 99 out of 100 homes, the piracy rate is 99%.
Excellent logic no?
Do you Gentoo!?
Kent: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that.
Homer the Vigilante
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
I know the parent was a troll, but sadly a lot of people believe this.
The fundamental argument, whether you're willing to admit it or not, is that the creators of software (or music for that matter) should not be paid for their creations.
Whatever justification you believe is a valid defense for illegally obtaining software, it all comes down to the fact that the creator of that product is not being justly compensated. I don't care if nothing is PHYSICALLY being stolen, the fact remains that he is not being paid for it, and that's where the theft comes from.
If you were a developer whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your software, I'm sure you'd see this issue very differently.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I would attribute any real decrease in piracy to the fact that many Free software projects "matured" very recently. I walked into a meeting for the NDP riding executive in my area and heard half the room raving about how amazing OpenOffice.org is, and these people are not geeks. The other day AbiWord was raved about in Toronto Computes, a paper that usually focuses on proprietary software (and gives only a nod to Apple).
Microsoft has just started letting people use Office at home if their employer owns a copy. Free software is ready for business, and MS knows it.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Its purely to stop people from being able to use the software without calling Microsoft!
Rob Enderle, a technology analyst with Forrester Research, added that while music and movies remain stand-alone products, software is increasingly packaged with technical support and regular updates. He said a pirated copy is sometimes worthless without those services.
Because when you call in they check to see if you have a registered copy!
Eventually, they'll have so many bugs that copying will be worthless and nobody will use their software at all!
[/troll]
Sorry, it had to be done.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Read the slashdot title... "BSA Creates Piracy Statistics". No, they didn't gather, collect, or compile them... they "created" them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
First of all... Look everyone its down 1%!!!! Whoopdi-do-da-day..... Second.... My company (Verizon) uses about 99% non-pirated software. Only about 80% desktops are Windows and the servers are running Linux and Unix and we are using mostly Java-based software. We have a few MS servers running around but they are only for test purposes. Every single piece of software in our company has a licence. We are very strick on that. In fact, every company I've ever worked for has been the same way. These stats are blouted.... I can see maybe your mom and pop ISP might have a few unlicenced copies of Office installed on a few machines, but I'm sure no one really cares.
No.
I think it's called pirating because we associate pirates with a certain glamour and boldness, even some kind of Robin Hood-like "take from the rich, give to the poor" attitude.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
Interesting that they came up with a piracy rate of 95% in Vietnam - given their probable margin of error, it's entirely possible that MORE THAN 100% of software in Vietnam is pirated. People in Vietnam WRITE software, just so they can steal it from THEMSELVES.
Kudos to the writer of the story, though, for NOT passing along the hugely overinflated "lost profits" number the report obviously included:
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
And In this case, you are probably right. However, this is not really a person-specific trait, but rather an organizational culture thing.
There is a great tendency for organizations to develop a certain mindset (either positive or negative), and then they hire in people that exhibit that mindset in some way, and fire/get rid of those that dont "fit in". In the HR world, its known as hiring "right types", and you can usually determine the companies opinion on this by looking at how they operate.
Over the course of time, people in the organization start to believe everything that their co-workers and bosses are saying to them, and hence, they develop views in sync with the company/organization. In this case, I would bet that the BSA, since one of its primary goals is to destroy piracy, they only hired in, and then hightened/enhanced this strange, rapacious behavior. I can almost guarantee you, however, that inside the company this is the norm.
The sad, sad next step will be when companies estimate they're loses by multiplying the cost of their software by the supposed number of pirated copies. Of course, this approach assumes that all of the people who have pirated the software would have paid full price for it if there was no other option. Of couse, by that logic, no store would ever have a sale. If you'd buy a wiget for 50% off, then you'd buy it for full price, right?
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Ok. Have to remember, in reading future BSA press releases that
"It is welcoming news to learn that the worldwide software piracy problem has improved significantly..."
and
"However, it's critical to recognise that the industry is facing a spiralling Internet piracy problem."
are not mutually exclusive statements. I wonder if that trick would work in board meetings. "Cost projections have improved significantly" sure sounds a lot better than "Costs are spiralling out of control"!
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
You're quite right, but there is an answer to this--even a respectably fair one too. (shock!)
If someone uses software without paying for/licensing it, then they are pirating it in one way or another. The point isn't that the company is necessarily losing money, it's that the person doesn't have the right (legal or arguably moral) to use the software. Probably 60% of the software pirated in North America (and here I'm just pulling numbers out of a hat) is NOT revenue lost for the companies who create it, but 100% of pirated software anywhere is used by someone who doesn't have the right to do so.[1]
The BSA would win a lot of hearts and minds if they pushed this aspect, but they're preaching to the CEOs and CFOs out there, and so they talk dollars. The result is that they loudly, aggressively, and constantly remind us that Every Single Pirated Copy Of Software Is Lost Revenue.(tm) Utter bullshit, but effective.
[1] This is a very grey area morally, and to some extent, legally. Say I bought a copy of Office95, and am now using a pirated copy of Office2000, because MS no longer supports Office95. I don't feel too bad about that, especially since I haven't used any features that have been added to Word or Excel or whatever since 95. On the other hand, if I use a pirated version of Office2k because I NEED some new feature, then it's a bit nastier.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Since the members of the BSA fix the prices for their own products, they can keep up these kind of nonsensical claims indefinitely. Like "The number of pirated copies has decreased 100%, but prices have gone up 200%, so piracy is actually getting worse, therefore we need trusted computing enforced". They can manipulate this any way they want to fit their agenda.
What's going on with pirates? Don't they know about Peer-to-Peer software? Until P2P software came about you had to search all over the net or ask around and be-friend Doods on IRC.
Damn, it's much easier to pirate now. If piracy is going down, it just shows how unresourceful pirates have become. Come on Doods. Let's all P2P and get those statistics up. Don't be a laggard!
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
It's largely a matter of who you want to believe. The BSA stats aren't any more inaccurate than the RIAA stats on music piracy, Symantec stats on virus/worm damage, or ISP/pundit stats on the cost of spam.
For a group of people eager to believe that the "spam plague" allegedly costs us all billions, it is more than a bit hypocritical to summarily dismiss whatever numbers the BSA or the RIAA come up with.
It's all a matter of what you love to hate. When you're decided on that, the numbers will follow.
No, 100% of statistics are worthless, but 21.53% of all statistics are made up.
Side note.
Adding a decimal point increases the truth of any statistic. 82.34% of people say so.
http://use.perl.org
At least we now know what the "BS" stands for in "BSA".
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I guess I was slacking last year. I'll do my best to get that back up to 41% next year. I PROMISE!
So software ISN'T only expensive because of rampant piracy then? Must be profiteering after all.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
"Here here. This meeting of the BSA will come to order. First order of business, Bradly will bring us up to date on overall sales."
"Well, overall sales have seen a decline since the stock market crash and the attacks of Sep.11. We also saw declines during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. This can be attributable to one thing: Piracy."
"How do you suggest we get our sales back up."
"Well, Bob in accounting kicked around some figures for how many units must be sold for Microsoft to meet its 100% margins, and apparently we're currently 40% below that target."
"Same as last year. Let's call it 39% just so that people think we're doing something. Now, how do we sell that much software?"
"That's the ingenious part of my plan. MS's 100% margin is based upon the case of their complete ownership of the market and complete compliance with their new Software Licencing 2.0 scheme... err, paradigm."
"Yes..."
"So obviously without viable commercial alternatives to Windows, the %100 figure represents the ideal, natural state of the market."
"Go on."
"What is the difference between the ideal sales market and the real market? Why, piracy of course. Whether it is pirated copies of Office or pirated SCO code, it all comes down to illegal piracy. Pirates pirating pirated piracies. Pirates. Pirates! Pirates! Piraaaaaates!"
"Bradly, you're locking up again. Come on back to us Bradly. Bill, would you slap Bradly please."
"Gladly."
SMACK
"Oww. Thanks. So because of this discrepancy, we should make it illegal to not meet our sales target. Then everyone from local law enforcement to the FBI will be out there trying to help us meet our sales goals. If we play our cards right, we can even be entitled to compensatory damages from the governments of the world who, after all, represent the population who is doing this pira... illegal activity (p..p..pirates. Pirates!)."
"Brilliant work Bradly. We'll get back on track towards Government 2.0 in no time."
"Thank you Mr. Ballmer."
The ______ Agenda
The increasingly powerul anti-piracy measures being taken (BSA 'military-strike style' audits, WinXP activation etc.) can only be a good thing for Free software, surely? By increasing the effective cost of using non-free software, they make free software more attractive.
The only useful purpose the BSA serve is to provide silly stories like this to make me laugh on a dull mid-week afternoon. Thanks!
1. I'd estimate the number of companies and the number of employees that require the work with computers. This is a tedious, but relatively straight-forward process, and Yahoo! business profiles would be everything I needed.
2. I'd take this number, and assign to it the same number of operating systems, word processors, e-mail programs, antivirus programs and maybe something else. I'd also arbitrarily determine the share of people why may need to use a spreadsheet and a presentation program, etc...
3. I would come up with a number for the aggregate usage of the appropriate software. Then, I would create a formula to calculate the average age of computers in companies (based on their accumulated depreciation and depreciable life), and calculate what share of computers needed to be replaced last year.
I'd do all this, and make a huge mistake. I would not consider that some of the users would opt for freely downloadable software, such as Open Office or the office suite from Software 602, and that some other users would migrate their old software onto new computers (the way I still do it with MS Office 97). As a result, my estimates for demand, and thus the estimates for software piracy would be vastly overblown.
Come on, is the decline really due to their *cough* extortion *cough*, I mean, enforcement techniques, or to the fact that businesses are becoming clueful to the dirty pool that these bastards play?
Honestly, I know that software piracy does happen, but after working for places like my last employer (a BIG HMO here in Minnesota) I have a hard time believeing those numbers. Evertime a piece of licensed software went on a pc, we had to run it past our licensing department. Didn't matter if it was a $30 copy of WinZip or some incredibly expensive imaging software. And if the BSA DID come to our company, the IT department would have had enough of a clue to meet them at the front doors with a team of security guards and something even more intimidating (at least to me): a team of lawyers. "Got a warrant? Then piss off" was the frame of mind we had.
It's hard to find pirated software if you can't make it past the front door.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Ok. Some facts.
1. The economy is/was in a downturn.
2. BIG corps can more easily afford to ride this out.
3. BIG corps usually can afford licensing of software etc etc...
Now, assuming a lot of tiny tiny companies haven't sprouted that would pirate software, wouldn't it be somewhat obvious that software piracy would be down?
Just playing devil's advocate.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
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.
It's not about the stats, it's about the love for the game.
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
The point is you can't figure it out. Demand for a product is some function of its 'desirability' and its price. Pirated software is free, so demand for pirated versions is high. If you took away the pirate option and instead offered only the expensive 'real thing', demand would fall away. That's what makes all these estimates so ridiculous - nobody can provide a real answer,so the BSA say whatever they want in order to guarantee themselves continued funding
Must be all those 12-17 yr old boys working on their computer merit badges...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
I've got an ocean-view home, but Beachside Activation continues to annoy me. Does anyone have a keygen?
Before the BSA starts talking about hijacking stuff, perhaps they need to talk to these people about infringing on names.
Help us build a better map!
Out of every 100 people who want to buy an ocean front home, only 1 actually bought an ocean front home, therefore the other 99% must have pirated their ocean front homes.
What he is pointing out is that sometimes people want things but don't (or aren't able to) obtain them at all.
In the software arena, if 100 people want a word processor, and 60 buy a word processor, that does not necessarily imply that 40 people stole a word processor. They might not have obtained a word processor at all.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
Peace ribbon?
You can't fool me -- this is clearly yet another goatse.cx troll, only rendered in ascii.
Years of repeated slashdot exposure mean that today I'd recognize that savaged sphincter anywhere -- even if it is hiding in a couple of ascii characters.
Okay BSA, here's a tip:
When the fruit of your efforts is less than the margin of error, it's time to rethink your strategy.
Is that you barabara striesand ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
We can assume by this that the BSA will be disolved in 39 years. Its really not a bad business plan for the lawyers, in 39 years most will be retired by then with nice hefty stacks of cash. They just have to say each year that they are being successful by 1% and that way the group corporations will keep paying them. When they finally get 39 years from now they'll be rich and really haven't done anything.
Or put another way in more slashdot terms:
1. Get corporations to pay lawyers to do stuff.
2. Lawyers harass legitimate purchasers of software.
3. Lawyers claim 1% success a year.
4. ??? (loop back to #2)
5. Profit! (and retire when no more %'s to go)
Now isn't that cynical.
In reality I'd say software piracy is a problem. I don't know how many times here I've seen folks claim that they pirate software because its so darn expensive. Well, sometimes there is a reason that software is expensive, it takes time and money to do right. Then folks will say that software is buggy and not done right so they shouldn't have to pay for it. Well, don't use it! Novel idea huh? It sickens me how often folks think that deserve stuff without paying for it.
Its really a simple idea folks. If you are unwilling to pay the price for something, you don't get to have it. It doesn't matter if you don't like the rules, they are the rules.
Which brings me to another point. OSS or free software. Use it if you don't want to pay for commercial software. No one is forcing you to use commercial software. Simpley owning a computer does not give you the right to use commercial software without paying for it. However, there are a lot of folks out there that write software that you can use for free. Use that.
Whining that your favorite game only runs on a certain platform isn't an excuse to pirate the software. There are many emulators, use those if you absolutely need to run the software. Otherwise tell the company that you want a version that runs on your platform.
Quit whining that life gets hard when you have to use OpenOffice.org to read word files and it isn't perfect. You look like a fool when you whine that something isn't up to your standards because its buggy so you won't pay for it then use it anyways.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
"They didn't pay for it; so, it must be a pirated copy..." ---can you see the logic???
of course, that makes me a pirate. Aaaarrg
Mainframes, AS/400s and UNIX, oh my!
We're starting a MAJOR effort where roughly 80-90 percent of all new web and middleware (messaging, etc) development will be happening on Linux (and J2EE predominately). We'll still have some MS, but MUCH less.
Our server types include blades, standard 2-way, and some 4+ processor machines. How many have Linux pre-installed? NOT ONE! We've bought over 200 Intel servers THIS YEAR (including dev, test and prod). Before year end, that could be as high as 600. Unless we have any more big expansions, then it could be many more.
Why don't we have Linux pre-installed? It's not practical. We have our own config of partition sizes and types (soon to include LVs) as well as software, network config, authorization config, etc. We have our OWN network based install we don't want/need the HW vendors doing.
What about those numbers? Where do they fit in the picture?
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated.
Of course they're pirated! I mean, think about it - smooth sailing conditions, easy access to major waterways for a quick escape, plenty of places to dock your ship, and lots of booty in those million-dollar homes. What self-respecting pirate wouldn't take advantage of that opportunity?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that!
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
I think the way they come up with their numbers is taking the number of new computers sold each year, guessing how many are for the workplace, assuming every work computer uses Windows and Office and a ratio of how many use whatever other packages (Photoshop et.al) and how many are for professional homes, assuming all the home users use Windows and guessing from the home users what percentage uses Office ... then comparing that number to the number of sold licenses of Windows, Office, and whatever.
If Intel and AMD combined sell 100 million CPUs this year and Microsoft only sells 60 million seats of Windows, then 40 million computers are using pirated OS. Same sort of thing with Office, etc...
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
The bottom line is that these guys are claiming to have discerned a 1% drop in an area of the piracy chart that must inherently be extrapolated from real world data. Given that even the interpolated statistics based on the real world data would already have a margin of error of more than 1%, there's no F-ing way that you can discern a 1% variance in data they haven't even measured.
How convenient that the first two letters of the association's acronym are BS.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The data comes from 1996-2001, still well inside the "new economy bubble" (or shall we say financial institutions driven "scam") that drived a lot of investors into totally insane multimillion projects. No wonder that the growth of the IT sector looks so good, when you look at 1996-2001 data.
Also pay attention to the "Hungary success story". U$ 729 Million increase in revenues from 1995 to 2001 and only 9000 new jobs in 6 years. Consider Hungarian average wage, exchange rate , inflation and you see that this revenue are either vaporware or...weren't left in Hungary for investment. If we pay even more attention, job may mean "job position" or "kinds of jobs". Guess that they could have specified that. Even if it's 9000 new "kinds of jobs" that means absolutely nothing, everybody today is an Executive Vice President Junior Senior Major Minor of something.
I could go on but I'd rather read a good comic that this comic (that was probably grossly overpaid too).
With these methodologies you have to wonder...
Here's some conspiracy thoughts:
Somewhere deep in the bowels of BSA headquarters there's a group of people who have this all planned out.
BSA Drone #1: Okay, first year we'll say piracy dropped a small amount thanks to our efforts. This will convince the companies and congress that our efforts are successful, but we need more help.
BSA Drone #2: Right, then during year 2 we'll get some more laws passed and get people used to more extrememe copy pretection.
BSA Drone #1: Right! They bought into the XP activation, now we can roll out the next step.
BSA Drone #2: Which is...?
BSA Drone #1: Tying activation to a bank account! It's the only way to be sure they're not pirates! Then when we have that in place we'll report a drop of 5% and complain loudly about OSS making it impossible to do audits.
BSA Drone #2: So stage 3 is requiring all government and big business customers to go 100% closed source. Brilliant!
BSA Drone #1: Let's get a taco.
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.
OK, I admit to not reading ALL the comments but with the current signal to noise ...
...
I have a question, what was the estimated piracy last year? If they reduced the value by 1% and say the 'value' was Ohhhh 1 billion, then they 'saved' 10 million dollars. What did they spend? Is this justification to put them out of business, "Give us 100 Million and We'll save you 10 Million". So what was the ROI of those bankrolling the BSA? -- Just asking
I bought a copy of Windows 2000 Server in Palestine for about $2 last month. The guy in the computer shop told me that before the intifada, people did buy legit copies of MS software. (Unemployment is now 90% in some areas due to curfews, and priorities are not what they used to be.) Theft as such is surprisingly rare in such a messed up place. People really look out for eachother.
Software piracy is seen not as theft but more as sharing. It's scary how little OSS software gets used. Occasionally you'll see a foreign NGO introduce it, or some of the people who study CS in university will know about it. A lot of the ISP infrastructure runs OSS. Running traceroute is always an experience. There ought to be an ICMP flag for "soldiers have cut off the power supply". Trying to enforce liscensing in Palestine would require a functioning police force, judicary and government, none of which actually exist. So people just copy.
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.
They have to, since they don't actually go after larger businesses, only the tiny, five-or-six-person mom and pop shops.
When I was unfairly let go from my previous employer, I decided to hit 'em hard by contacting the BSA. As I was the Network Manager, I could tell them about pretty much every piece of pirated software, and I did. I went to the BSA site and filled out a report documenting hundreds of missing licenses for MS Office, MS Exchange, a number of Adobe products, and a few from Macromedia (all of their big vendor companies). I even documented how Lotus SmartSuite is installed on about 300 computers, yet we only had 4 legal copies, not to mention all the small shareware-type shit (like SnagIt and WinZip) that was installed on almost every PC without one legal license in the place.
I documented the "plan" we had in case of audit...it seems you can refuse them entry the first time they drop by for a visit, but they come back later that day with sherrifs and a warrant to force the issue. More than enough time for use to ghost a pirated-clean image on all the machines (using a pirated copy of ghost, of course). We even went to the trouble to compile a list of every machine that had pirated software so we could quicly decide which ones would need ghosting first.
Finally, I documented the little utility one of the members of the IT staff was forced to write ("it's written, or you're out of a job") to bypass the licensing restrictions of MS Terminal Services. I even gave them a link to the company's website where they could download it (it was up there so the salesmen could get it at home).
And, what happened? Nothing. For three months I called every week to see what the status was, and was told each time that there was nothing new to report. It was in the hands of the member companies. Finally, I was told that one of the member companies had decided not to pursue.
When I asked why, I was told they didn't have a reason, but it could be because: "the member company may already be investigating or negotiating with the company, the company may have some kind of site license, or the member company may have some other kind of relationship with the company in question." None of these were the case (I still have contacts in the IT department).
No, the truth is, the BSA simply can't walk into a large company and tell 500 people to get off their machines for a day while they're audited. It's logistically impossible. So, they advertise lots and lots of threats, send out "truce" notices, and make a lot of people worry about nothing.
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I'm pretty sure that Linux use is increasing faster than that.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I am pretty sure that is how they do it. I have seen statistics from them showing how there are 1.68 new computers sold each year for every copy of (Windows or Office, take your pick) and if you do a little magic math (1/1.68 = .595) you see a 59.5% legitimate purchase rate, or almost exactly the 40% piracy rate they claim.
... but hey, there are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics.
OSS, Linux, StarOffice or whatever, and folks that retire a machine and migrate the software they paid to use all skew that number
It would be a pretty easy way to boil up numbers for 3rd world countries, just figure out how many computers get sent there in a given year, figure out how many copies of legit software get purchased, simmer on high for 5 minutes and Voila! cooked books.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I got laid off so I got a business license and started trying to make a little money on the side. (Any one want a Mexican Samuri Sword?)
About a week after I got my license I got a nasty letter from the BSA. It made a lot of threats. Said that they had the right to inspect my place of business (my home) and gave be a "chance" to get all my software license up to date before they came to tear my compters apart.
My reaction was fairly normal. I ignored them. A couple of weeks later I got another nasty letter. This time I made sure my door locks were solid. I made sure I could find my ammunition and guns in the dark. And, I took every bit of software that I had from BSA members and threw it out. I am now 100% pure open source software.
After reading through a couple of BSA letters and discussing them with a lawyer it becomes obvious that most small business can't afford to *own* software made by BSA members. The legal liability for missplacing a software license is greater than the value of the business. Misplace a license, lose your house, your savings, your kids college fund, your ability to buy perscription drugs...
Stonewolf
Presumably they have to justify their existence by showing that there is a lot of infringment out there - nobody would believe it if they said 99% of software was copied against the word of the licence, and vice versa, if they claimed that 1% was being illegally copied people would ask why they were bothering.
So I guess their chief of marketing said "hmmm, make it a small amount less than last year, to show we're having an effect, otherwise our customers will decide we are not worth it".
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
What I found particularly ironic was at a prior company that I worked for, several employees felt perfectly at home copying pirated software (games, Office, etc) while at the same time going to great lengths to add copy-protection to the very software we wrote and sold.
I guess pirated software was okay as long as it was *someone else's* profits that were being ripped off..
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