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BSA Piracy Study Deeply Flawed
zbik writes "Corante reports that The Economist has blown the lid off the BSA's recent report on software piracy (covered by Slashdot), referring to their methods as 'BS'.
'They dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms.' The BSA has complained that the article is offensive but does not dispute their analysis. Score one for common sense."
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Dear Madam:
The 'BS' in the headline was simply referring to your initials...
No harm done.
The use of the word 'Madam' in our letter, on the other hand, is deliberate.
Sincerely,
The Economist
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
> >
> > Beth Scott
> > Business Software Alliance
> > London
>
> Dear Madam:
>
> The 'BS' in the headline was simply referring to your initials...
> No harm done.
> The use of the word 'Madam' in our letter, on the other hand, is deliberate.
>
>Sincerely,
> The Economist
Dear Economist:
Your reply to my earlier letter was extreme, misleading and irresponsible ("Madam", June 14th). The deliberate choice of the word "Madam" was particularly offensive. The implication that an industry would purposely inflate the rate of piracy and its impact to suit its political aims is ridiculous. Whether you refer to unpaid sex acts as "open source", "trying it before you buy", or "blocking the auto-updating daemon with a heavy-ass firewall" the threats posed by individuals slutting around, living together, and the signing of marriage contracts are real and need no exaggeration!
Beth S., Madam
Bunnyranch Sex-worker's Alliance
Nevada
The BSA's fraudulent activities cost Linus Torvalds over $300 billion dollars yearly in the United States alone.
Their bogus numbers have caused people to be frightened away from Linux, which Linus *could* potentially be selling for $1000. The fact that he is making *no money* from each copy of Linux used is due to the fact that the BSA has damaged the perception of Linux so much. As a product technically superior to Windows, it should have taken over by now. That's $1000 per person. There are ~300 million people in the United States, counting every man, woman, and child. (We all know that GNOME is simple enough for a baby to use, so counting babies is perfectly legitimate.) Since Linux is upgraded so frequently, people would buy a new copy about annually.
As you can see, since the BSA is COSTING LINUS TORVALDS OVER $300 BILLION DOLLARS IN THE UNITED STATES THIS YEAR ALONE, we desperately need laws to protect the starving open source software authors that are being victimized by the criminal activity of the BSA. It is crucial that we receive laws to protect these authors -- all companies choosing a non-open-source software product over an open-source software product should be required to annually submit a report with cost estimates and associated usability/compatibility testing as to why they choose not to use open source software.
No, it's just not the same. We need whatever PR people the BSA has.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
And the rebuttal they sent was signed by a Beth Scott. It's BS all the way...