Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
'hire nearly 25,000 experienced police officers.'
By definition, won't most experienced police officers already have jobs? Say, as police officers?
So, according to the BSA, when you don't buy software, you put the cash you didn't spend under your mattress so the city doesn't get any tax revenue from it (past income taxes, I assume).
Man, I'd better check under my mattress when I get home! I might just be RICH!
is this: if a company pirates (arrrrr, mateys!) a piece of software, they immediately take the money that would have been used to buy that software and stick it in an underground vault, never to be seen or spent again. That's why the state gets no tax revenue.
What a bunch of schmucks.
Do you have ESP?
Just because somebody pirates something doesn't mean they would pay for it if that was the only way. They would instead just NOT BUY IT. The entire premise that if you are losing so much in taxes is bunk. Pirating may cause harm in disrupting some tax money, just not that much.
I mean, honestly, could people even raise that kinda of tax money if they had the cash to buy the software?
import system.cool.Sig;
Not as bad as the RIAA?
Does the RIAA have jack booted thugs that can walk into your office with body armor and machine guns? Do they fine you millions of dollars if you can not produce the receipt for every version of software ever purchased or installed on a machine? Etc.
Just think about it... There's no tax revenue on Open Source software! People are using it for FREE! It's the end of the government! OH NOES!!!!
Suppose companies were paying salaries with the money they save by pirating software. Then rather than
X * 0.05 = 25,000 police
we would have
X = 20*25,000 = 500,000 unemployed people
So another way of looking at the statistics is that the BSA wants to put 1/2 a million people out of work in each state.
Lies damn lies and statistics, learn to master them.
If every big corporation did not out source we could employee 10,000,000 United States Citizens and therefor increase tax money to employ 500,000 experienced police officers.
I make this point at least once a month.
There used to be an assumption of ethics. If someone was caught in a lie or fabrication, it would be shameful and cause harm to the individual or an organization. Even organizations with which you disagree would probably be telling the truth.
Those days are long gone. There isn't any effort into presenting the truth. No one cares. Everyone merely selects facts that support their position and tosses the rest. If you dare to present opposing facts, it just becomes a dispute.
Look at "intelligent design" for some reason news agencies seem to think they they deserve equal time with actual science. That is no different than putting astronomers and astrologers on equal footing. Yes, Carl Sagan said there are billions of stars, but madam Maria predicts that there only 100,000 and half of them are in retrograde until 2012. Dial in, who do you believe? 1-900-USA-fucked
There is no ethics or common sense. There is no public outcry or demand that public statements be factually accurate. We expect people to lie. We then use the lies we like to bolster our opinions based on our prejudices.
Communication is impossible when everyone is lying.
I have three linux machines at home. Every time I fire one up I run several hundred 'programs', including X, Qt, the TCP/IP stack, flash, firefox, amarok, ipchains. My two little headless linux computers, one disguised as a DSL modem and the other as a firewall, likewise run at least dozens of programs. I know there are tens of thousands of computers hosting websites all over the world that, likewise, are running dozens of 100% free programs.
For their 1 out of 5 statistic to be right, within the United States, there must be a dozen people running nothing but pirated software just to make up for me.
I know nine other people who are, likewise, running multiple computers, including several Windows machines, that have 100% legit/free programs on them. So now we're up to a hundred or so people running nothing but pirated software just to make up for me and my nine friends.
Are there vast underground barracks filled with armies of illegal software users in Ohio and Florida? Is China outsourcing its goldfarming to the ghettos of East LA?
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Yeah this is the same flawed logic the RIAA uses. They make the assumption that you would have bought Photoshop, had you not pirated it. Therefore, any pirated program is a loss of revenue in a 1:1 ratio. That simply ISN'T the case. About 11tybillion people downloaded applications that they never would have paid for in the first place. Actual revenue losses are much less than 1:1.
They are equally bad as the RIAA. Not sure how they operate in the US, but here in Belgium and the Netherlands, they don't have the best reputation. If they "suspect" piracy, they'll come knocking on your door and demand to have access to all computer-systems (though in some cases, they do announce their visit one or two weeks in advance). Everyone is ordered to move away from any computer system and they'll start snooping around while you dig up all license information. People not working costs money, but then again, it is not the BSA's money.
What's worse is that if you are not able to find all proper licenses in time, you have two options. Let the BSA confiscate your equipment and go to trial, or sign a settlement. Most business will do the latter. In Belgium, a Printing Shop recently won a case against the BSA which had opted to do the latter (sign the settlement, for 60.000,-, which was cheaper than losing their workstations for an unspecified time) because they were unable to locate all licenses in time (visit wasn't announced). But when did locate all the licenses and asked the BSA their money back, the BSA refused to undo the settlement. In the end the Printing Shop got back their money though the courts, 60.000,00 plus interest plus expenses, but AFAIK, cases like this show that the BSA is nothing more than another money grabbing machine.
The BSA numbers are highly suspect. Here's their forumla:
As Russel McOrmond points out, only two of these numbers are actually known: the number of machines shipped and the amount of legal BSA software. The usage estimate multiplier is an estimate of the average amount of software on a machine in a given region. The essential number, however, may be the amount of legal open source software. How on earth do you calculate that? If it is low, then the piracy numbers could be way off. I distribute some open source code, and even I don't have a clear idea of how many people use it. McOrmond says FLOSS not shipped with a PC is often not included. Read McOrmond's article for an in-depth explanation.
My Mac has only a few BSA apps - the OS, iLife, and Photoshop Elements. How is the BSA to know that I'm also running Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice (all FLOSS), or Scrivener, Tinderbox, and NetNewsWire (all legal non-BSA stuff written by and purchased from individuals)? How about my parents' machines, on which I've installed OpenOffice software? They probably wouldn't remember it was open source even if asked.
This is one major reason to buy retail and not a corporate license.
The only thing that allows them to do this is your consent to inspection.
t
Eliminating the failed prohibition model "war on some drugs" would result in being able to fire 25,000 cops as "not needed at all", as the main result of said war has been an accelerated crime rate related to black market prices and the associated violence with those huge sums of money. No telling how much savings there, but I would imagine it is in the billions. Switching to free and open source, just with governmental use on governmental machines, and especially if magically it could be retroactive back 10 years or better, would have freed up enough cash to give every person in ohio a free computer on savings over software licensing fees, said fees based completely on the "artificial scarcity" model of busy-ness as it relates to digital copies. And probably allow them to give upgrades every few years as well, using the same exact cash levels they are spending now.
Now mine is thin air and I admit it, but at least it is closer to reality than the BSA and MAFIAA "enron styled" accounting figures, and that tie in with cops and crime was just too obviously *lame*.
In other words, get on board with the anti-piracy program and you will have more revenue to trample peoples rights outside of cyberspace.
Keep in mind that part of the target audience of the report is the law enforcement community who at some point has to see some benefit for themselves if they are going to enforce anti-piracy laws. Notice that they don't talk about it in terms of after school programs, or more teachers. Nope, not here in Amerika. We need more cops damn it! The people are getting too uppity.
There is some legitamacy to the BSA's claims, but not that much. Many companies incorrectly implement site licenses of software, or misenterpret the scope of the license. Therefore, a company may not knowingly be violating the terms of the license, and therefore not be pirating the software, but may still be out of compliance.
You've got to think about how those licenses work anyway. Every time your business orders a new Dell or HP workstation, it comes with a Windows2000/XP/Vista license sticker. What happens to the old sticker that was on the machine your company returned? Where did the new sticker come from? What if the sticker is for XP, but you are running 2000? What about Office/Visio/Visual Studio/etc... that came pre-installed. Some licenses don't allow downgrading, but even though you have an Office 2005 license, you HAVE to install 97/2000 because of the other applications you may be using. There's lots of ways "unlicensed" software can be installed on a companies PC without anyone thinking about it. Now, is that justifiable cause to fine/sue a company out of existence? No way, but then again, I don't work for the BSA.
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Cat Litter
Soda
. . . I offered to upgrade the office to Vista (from XP) for the boss, he jumped on the opportunity. I also switched office 03 to office 07, installed norton and acrobat 8. It was only about 40 computers.
. . .
When they called to let my boss know they'd be investigating, he asked me if he should be worried. I told him that I was sure that our windows licenses were good for ANY version of windows, and not to worry.
. . .
Since it was my word against my bosses word and he couldn't provide the licenses, he opted to have the computers confiscated (maybe because he didn't have the money?).
So the moral of the story is that it's easy to make unauthorized copies of software and bait a company into being an accessory to it and use the BSA as your personal army to settle your backpay vendetta?
You should consider running for office.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Then perhaps another acronym is in order: RICO
The BSA apparently have a long-established pattern of illegal behavior.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
My only illegal software is the DVD player hack that let's me watch the DVDs I legally purchased. It kills me that I have to break the law or buy a M$ product.
You can also buy an Apple product or a DVD player to legally play DVDs. Even the latter is more intelligent than a M$ product ;)
.sig: No such file or directory
Disclaimer: As a software engineer I absolutely in no way shape or form support software piracy.
I have serious issues with studies like this which indicate that "lost tax revenue" could do this or that for the population. Where do these groups think the money is coming from? The taxpayers would be the ones coughing that cash up, and in an economy like this there's no more cash to cough up.
Don't compare things to real dollars unless you can prove there is a market willing to pay those real dollars!
To me, a "narc," "rat" or "snitch" is someone who gets caught at something, so he rats out others who were doing the same thing as he was so he can get off lightly, thus profiting from whatever he was doing wrong, then further serving his own interests at the expense of others by ratting them out.
This case is different. The above-mentioned douche bag set up his former employer and profited from it, while his co-workers - who had nothing to do with his pay dispute - were effectively screwed in the process.
So, yeah, I'd go along with rat, and any number of other epithets.