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.'"

Comments

I doubt there are flaws

[stoolpigeon]

because the bsa has really nothing to gain by providing numbers that don't accurately reflect the true situation with regards to the use of unlicensed software.

Re:I doubt there are flaws

[zappepcs]

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.

hmm

[nomadic]

'hire nearly 25,000 experienced police officers.'

By definition, won't most experienced police officers already have jobs? Say, as police officers?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting about gritty ex-cops who retired in protest of the widespread corruption in the system, only to take up the badge again one last time when duty called, because they're the best damn cop the state has seen and the only man alive who can get the job done. There are a lot of those.

Re:hmm

[uxbn_kuribo]

Guys like that are loose cannons. I won't have people like that on my force! Except, I must admit, they get results. Otherwise, I'd have their badges so fast, it would make their heads spin!

Re:hmm

[zmollusc]

Hey man, don't get so worked up! Remember how close you are to retiring!

Tax revenue?

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Tax revenue?

[Sunshinerat]

Now I did quick mental check of the non-licensed software and must say that i can only think of three products. I could do without it, I am hardly using it. The other hundereds of software are validly licensed and not paid for in dollars and cents.

Regarding the economic principles, money can only be spent once. If people are not spending their money on software, they are spending it on food, clothes, ipods etc. Which would produce tax income for the states.

Unless everyone who does not pay for some software product puts the equivalent in the bank, the assumption that it would generate heaps of additional cash for the states is simply False. Check the current balance on the average persons credit card.

So this person(s) who produced this report have tunnel vision, have different interests or are copying the things they see daily on tv (political tunnel vision).

Re:Tax revenue?

[vux984]

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).

Evidently yes. I mean what else would they do with it? Spending on expanding the business? Surely not!

Of course, that assumes they ever had the money in the first place. I mean, if I have 0$ and I chose to pirate MS Office... well.. sure that counts as a lost sale, and lost tax revenue to the BSA... but since I had 0$ left in the budget, I was never going to buy the software or anything else for that matter.

But what REALLY bugs me about the BSA is that they consider upgrades for which you can't prove a complete chain for as a 'unlicenses/unauthorized/pirated'.

I mean, I have Vista Ultimate Upgrade on my PC. I obtained that legally, by upgrading my copy of Windows XP Professional Upgrade, which I obtained legally by upgrading my Windows 98 upgrade, which I obtained legally when I upgraded my Windows 95 retail which was purchased on 25 floppy disks over a decade ago. I do not have those floppy discs or license anymore from the original 95 purchase. (And it might even have been an upgrade to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups... I don't even remember.)

If I were audited by the BSA they would find my copy of Vista as 'unlicensed'.

This sort of scenario happens all the time in BSA audits where companies that bought a 5 user VLA in 1992, then in 98 upgraded them to a 10 user VLA (5 new licenses, 5 upgrade licenses), then upgraded to a 20 user VLA in 2002 (10 new licenses 10 upgrade licenses), then upgraded to 25 licenses in 2006 (5 new licesnes, 20 upgrade licenses)... and the BSA shows up...

And you pull out your licenses ... and all you've kept are the 2002, and 2006 ones, but you misplaced or discarded the old 92 and 98 ones, so they determine that you have 15 valid licenses. (the 10 new ones bought in 2002 and upgraded in 06 plus the 5 new ones in 06. The rest are unsubstantiated and you better pay up quick you lousy crook!

Meanwhile the company your dealing with has been bought twice since 92, and the product has been renamed 3 times... and they have no record that you bought a VLA from a company acquired by a company they acquired years ago. Even the accounting records have been destroyed. All that old shit takes up valuable space.

And that's the VLAs... Its far more difficult for a small business to keep every box and license of every piece of software they ever bought just so they can show the BSA one day, especially after a few rounds of upgrades. And small businesses with 4 or 5 people don't usually have VLA's, just a cupboard where they have a bunch of stuff, and when the cupboard is full they usually toss the old versions of old software they've upgraded from...)

Its pure bullshit.

Can you imagine the BSA doing an audit of your home, not for software, just for everything in it. How much of the stuff in your home can you "prove" is legally purchased? You have receipts for every CD, every book, all your cutlery, dishes, pots, clothes, furniture?

Of course not, but that doesn't mean its all STOLEN.

Re:Tax revenue?

[vux984]

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.

Re:Flaw? With the BSA? What a surprise...

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Experiences officers?

[ozamosi]

What they don't tell you is that those 25.000 cops are Indian and working in India to lower the costs.

Re:Flaw? With the BSA? What a surprise...

[Stanistani]

I think it's time for the Boy Scouts of America to file suit and get their acronym back.

Hey, the World Wide Fund for Nature did it...

putting the money in another pocket

[RichMan]

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.

From future reports

[Captain Spam]

Not having RTFA or RTFR referred to by TFA, I still have to say I'm amused by the last line in the summary (presumably paraphrasing the report) and its implications to further reports...

"The lost state and local tax revenue from piracy would have been enough to save the lives of HUNDREDS of poor, sick people, assuming they could afford the hospital costs after becoming poor from buying software regulated by our association."

"The lost state and local tax revenue from piracy would have been enough to pay the ransom on this CEO's poor daughter, kidnapped by evil software pirates, and because you selfish greedy bastards had to go and murder her by pirating software, they didn't have the money to pay to get her back! I HATE YOU ALL!"

"The lost state and local tax revenue from piracy would have been enough to save the lives of five hundred innocent kittens from being pulverized in our patented BSA Kitten Pulverizing Machine, whose sole purpose is to abduct and pulverize kittens constantly and whose operations may only be tempered by a continuously-accelerating stream of revenue. Why do you selfish pirates want the kittens to be pulverized? It's all your fault, you know."

Yet another statistic shows

[soast]

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.

Re:BSA/**AA

[Red Flayer]

Well, we used to call it the MAFIAA (Music and Film Industry Associations of America). I don't know about you, but "SMAFIAA" just doesn't have the same kick to it.

True, but it does make me think of them as small and blue, which helps.

Re:I just can't imagine how they figured this out

[eln]

"Do you pirate software?"
"No."
"Well obviously a filthy pirate like you would lie about it, I'll put you down as a 'Yes'."

ETHICS!!

[mlwmohawk]

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.

Dude. Someone's got to be really busy pirating.

[smellsofbikes]

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?

BSA methodology may count FLOSS as piracy

[Geof]

The BSA numbers are highly suspect. Here's their forumla:

Infringement = (machines shipped) * (usage estimate multiplier) - (legal BSA) - (legal non-BSA) - (legal FLOSS)

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.

Well, I can pull numbers out of the air, too

[zogger]

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*.

Re:Flaw? With the BSA? What a surprise...

[Nadaka]

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

Re:Yup! Nopiracy.com

[Applekid]

. . . 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.