Slashdot Mirror
P2P Networks Blamed For Software Losses Doubling
L1TH10N writes "CNET News is reporting that software manufacturers have doubled their losses to $29 billion dollars, according to a BSA survey, which is blaming P2P networks for their misfortune. Seems a little too far-fetched to me - a P2P network would be the last place where I would download software, just too much chance that you are downloading a trojan onto your computer. Me thinks the Business Software Alliance are jumping on the bandwagon and vilifying P2P networks just as the Senate is taking aim at P2P providers."
BSA is the group that was mass-mailing towns a couple years ago, giving small business owners 30 days of 'amnesty' to get their licenses caught up.
Thing is, the BSA had zero proof that anybody was doing anything wrong. They just got a list of small businesses from the local town hall, and sent mass letters to everyone in the town. I got mine.
Point is, don't believe anything the BSA says or does.
I wonder how The Business Software Alliance determined that the software industry's $29 billion in losses were due to p2p networks, and not due to increased use of open source software.
I'm not a mathematician, so I really don't know, but does Maxima compare well to Mathematica and does Octave compare well to Matlab? I'm really curious how a side-by-side comparison of these packages looks like by those who used them.
Engineering and the Ultimate
It's worth reading, even if there is not much information. Their methodology is still laughable. Any statistican who reads their study would throw it in the wastebasket immediately. Or rather, he would use it as an example of "what not to do" for his first year students.
So the study don't say anything about opensource -- so as mentioned before, anyone who uses OpenOffice counts as a pirate. The press releases of BSA say that this factor has been taken into account but (1) I haven't seen anything in the report and (2) you can't, except if you accept very wide error margins.
Talking about which, their report do not provide any kind of estimation about the errors, which is a good indication that the people who made it are not competent. For example, BSA insists on the difference between an illegal copying rate of 32% in Australia, versus 29% in other countries -- there is NO WAY that such a difference can be significant given their methodology.
The worst thing, as mentioned by other people, is that this piece of crap will be shown to every government on the planet to lobby them to enforce IP laws and make new ones if "necessary".
Zorglub
One way to describe this is to imagine cars as software. Instead of stealing a BMW, think of the thief "duplicating" it. Ok, so there will be alot of people who decided not to shell over $50k for a new beemer -- they could have, but the got it for free instead. Now add in all the people who can't afford $50k for the new BMW, but got one because it was free. The way the BSA (MPAA and RIAA are doing the same) is making these calculations is by saying everyone who is driving a BMW they didn't pay for is $50k in lost revenue. Then factor in the third-world were people may be lucky to make $1000 a year -- they aren't going to pay $20 for software much less $500.
Yes, software companies *are* loosing money to "piracy." Many are indirect losers. Lets go back to the BMW thing again. Who would buy a Ford if they could have a free BMW instead? Same with software companies, people aren't buying Paint Shop Pro because they got Photoshop for free. However, the BSA, MPAA, RIAA, and others are destroying their credibility by giving out ridiculously exagerated numbers. Remember the people who told you pot was as bad as herion?
Isn't it interesting that piracy happens most in countries where one piece of software would cost more than people make in a year?
How ya like dat?
Me thinks the Business Software Alliance are jumping on the bandwagon and vilifying P2P networks just as the Senate is taking aim at P2P providers."
The irony being, of course, that the vast majority of their claimed losses are outside the US, where a United States P2P ban would have absolutely no effect.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Artificial scarcity enforcement will always fail.
Even in the face of a draconian future where DRM is mandated to be wired into all hardware, and each person needs an identifying digital certificate to access the "SECURE internet", there will STILL be huge subchannels where information flows freely as well as a huge blackmarket for open hardware (from China no doubt).
The best business model for CREATORS to switch to in the face of this new reality is to GET PAID UPFRONT FOR THE SCARCE ACT OF (GOOD) ORIGINAL CREATION, instead of relying on many small forced payments for an artifically scarce copy (carried over from when the media itself was scarce and distribution expensive). The Street Performer Protocol is one such model; there are many more variations. These kinds of distributed patronage systems are the way to go, IMO; not lock and key.
--
Power to the Peaceful
Yes and this is the business model I follow. I get paid for my development efforts up front. If you are skilled engineer you dont work in a ford factory assembling the automotive equivalent of microsoft word. You also dont change oil, the automotive equivalent of being a consultant or a maintenance programmer.
The skilled engineer builds custom software for companies with deep pockets. The automotive equivalent of having a shop that builds race cars and does custom fabrication.
And this software I make is in turn sold to other companies with deep pockets. They like the assurance that a company will fix bugs if they find any and provide them with expert support on their setups. You dont get that with microsoft.
The funny thing is that Bill Gates feels exactly the same way. Someone my parents know recnetly spoke to Bill for advice regading a software package his company is developeing. Bill esentially said that his big mistake was to charge people on a one time per license basis. He said something to the effect that he's now having to include useless bells and whistles in his software to try to get people to upgrade, but it isn't working. He's now trying desperately to move on to a subscription based model for most of his software (wow, thats original). Anyway, just thought slashdotters might find that interesting.
This could be considered offtopic, but I think not. This is where the software industry should look when trying to account for their losses.
Would you people please stop using this as a justification to not pay for something! I can't beleive what I am reading,
Learn to read, if you will. He wasn't justifying illegal copying, but pointing out that despite the GGP's claim that the software industry was effectively dying.
There are 1000's of people downloading software at no cost to them, which is normally sold for a price, how can that not hurt a company?
How would it hurt your company if those people hadn't bought your software otherwise? If someone copies Photoshop 8 in order to produce a few graphics on his personal homepage, is he stealing Adobe $1200? What do you think would've happened if he hadn't been able to pirate any image editing program?
Whether the correct answer is 2 or 3, it most certainly isn't 1. In both cases, he wouldn't have paid Adobe any more money than by pirating Photoshop. So in effect, piracy may hurt the competition, rather than the company whose product is illegaly copied.
So, based on all this crap people are trying to unload with regards to copyright and justifications based on prices or features, blah, blah. Let's just take the example of a Newspaper, there is copyrighted information in that and for the most part, this stuff is available online, so instead of reading the Times online, step into your local news stand, grab a copy and walk out, do you think that you will be stopped?
There is a real cost for printing a newspaper, and, more importantly, they might later run out of copies so they can't service paying customers any more. The same is not true for file sharing. Try stealing a hotdog. Do you think you will be stopped?
Lastly, have you seen the balance sheet on this company? they are making billions! How can they get away with this?
No, but if my company makes billions in software then I'm not supposed to whine all day about rip-offs, that's just ridiculous. Copying Photoshop or MS Office is illegal, but I'll spare my pity for those who're really in need, like kids in India whose parents can't afford $10 for diarrhea medication.
I posit that Adobe and Microsoft actually benefit greatly from piracy, and that it's the smaller competition instead which suffers. Why? If tomorrow was the day on which copying MS Office and Photoshop became impossible, what do you think would happen?
In the short term, MS and Adobe might see more profits, but in the long term, a lack of a private user base would hurt their business sales dramatically. Just consider that Microsoft is currently promoting MS Office over the OOo/SO competition by pointing out that people are already used to MSO and would need to be retrained expensively. Wouldn't this argument be reversed if home users actually preferred OOo? And then consider Microsoft's statement that they do not plan to enforce their copyright towards private users. Why not? Simply because a "stolen" MS product is still more useful to them than a legally purchased competitor's product. By far!
Who do you think hurts Microsoft more? A student who pirated Windows XP, or myself? I'm not running XP at all, I'm running Gentoo Linux. Moreover, I'm a software developer. Switching from Windows to Linux has made me aware of portability issues. All applications that I produce now (at least if I'm given the choice) are portable to just about any platform of your preferrence, or easily made so. I use wxWidgets for GUI, mult
I love C++
I don't think it was a "mistake" at all -- when Gates started, the dominate business model from IBM and those guys was Software Subscriptions. And the result was a bunch of slow-moving maintenance mode stuff that people paid an arm-n-leg for. After all, if the revenue kept coming in, why make any improvements?
Customers flocked to PCs and Microsoft/Lotus/Adobe/Apple/Novell because you could buy it once and forget it for 5 years. When Gates had something new, he usually made it better/sexy enough to get people to upgrade. For all your moaning, I don't see any laws forcing people to upgrade to Windows XP. Run Windows 3.1 if you'd like -- nothing stopping you but model year envy.
One big problem with "Enterprise Linux" is that it's basically Ye Olde IBM business model where you pay annually for stability. Which is fine for Oracle servers and the like, but probably will never be competitive with the featuritus of shrinkwrap software. This should be obvious if you compare the relative advancement of (say) Solaris against Windows in the 90s.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.