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Flaws In a BSA Software Piracy Report?
Ian Lamont writes "The Business Software Alliance has just released its state piracy study (full PDF also available). The BSA says that one in five pieces of software in use in the United States is unlicensed, and notes that piracy rates are highest in Ohio (27%). However, as noted by the Industry Standard, there are problems with the state study, and the way the BSA is presenting the data: the study only includes eight states, and it is making some questionable connections, including the claim that lost state and local tax revenue from piracy would have been enough to 'hire nearly 25,000 experienced police officers.'"
I had been under the impression that the BSA data was faulty due to their business plan rather than anything else. No car salesman is ever going to tell you the transmission is about to crap out. Of course this car is a great deal!
The BS Alliance has a history of some shady tactics, many worthy of SCO fame. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bsa+complaint+software&btnG=Search gets about 133,000 hits. That usually means there are plenty of people in the world ready to tell you they are unhappy about the BSA.
Yep, no flaws in that data. It's showing you exactly what they want you to see.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
I am having difficulty digging up other articles about the BSA using armed police (in some european countries the police carried machine guns) on their audits. IIRC there were a few slashdot articles on this a couple years ago.
Oh, and my bad. It looks like the RIAA does use jack booted thugs with machine guns...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/magazine/18djdrama.t.html?_r=1&ref=slashdot&oref=slogin
You're suggesting that, even with the original media in your hands, the BSA would then accuse you of having pirated that software?
First, they don't say its 'pirated' (except in their lobbying rhetoric) they call it an 'unlicenced' copy, which really amounts to the same thing to them.
Secondly, when you buy a VLA, you often purchase media 'separately'; e.g you might pay 20,000$ for 200 licenses of software X at 100 per copy, and then buy 2 media kits (installation CDs) at $25 a shot. And having the media means nothing, its the paperwork that counts. Plus these days, its pretty common to just download the iso.
As for non-VLA software, if you've got a 'full version' installation media your probably ok, provided you have enough original disks... but if you'v got an 'ugrade version', its not a valid license unless you also have the version you upgraded -FROM- right down to the start of the chain.
Their reasoning is that you could have bought one copy of Office 2000, then bought 10 copies of Office XP Upgrade, and used the original Office 2000 media as the basis for each of the upgrades. So if you can only produce one copy of office 2000, 9 of your Office XP upgrades are 'unlicensed'.
Or in the case of more trusting software, maybe you even bought the upgrade, without ever having owned the original, or maybe you sold the previous version...)
You painted a total nightmare scenario in your hypothetical. Imagine if RIAA, MPAA, and BSA were to form a single cartel, pool their resources, and use their authority over local law enforcement (which they've blackmailed) to conduct such raids of your home.
It would be a nightmare scenario.
And the BSA already does this to businesses -- its generally a nightmare for them, as all but the most organized of megacorps who have a full time staff dedicated to their internal software inventory and licensing have a shot of satisfying the BSA.
Everybody else, even if they actually did buy everything they use, aren't going to be able to prove it.
Plus most businesses fail legitimately. After all even 'good' businesses get nailed on things like Winzip shareware (owned by Corel, a member of the BSA), [I use and recommend 7-zip because of this] or on fonts... e.g. they'll have unlicensed copies of the TrueType font XYZ used in their logo on floating around (which is owned by Adobe, a member of the BSA), for example....
So they get just about everybody on something, and a BSA audit is more about "how much" its going to cost you rather than "if".
Its really quite sick.