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Calling BS On the BSA Global Piracy Report
An anonymous reader writes "The Business Software Alliance released their annual global piracy report earlier this week. In addition to the usual claims of
software piracy (PDF) and the grudging acknowledgment of open source software, Michael Geist noted that the report ultimately undermined one of the BSA's core arguments — that countries which enact DMCA-style legislation experience significantly reduced piracy rates. Questions have also been raised over the BSA's methodology, as has happened in the past."
did some1 already sue the BSA once?
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
If a report said, for example, that people prefer digital distribution over physical media, or vice versa, they'd simply make sure that their distribution model was optimised for the market. They wouldn't continue to commit resources to the distribution method that doesn't work.
Logically they should look at this report, realise that DMCA like legislation doesn't work and divert resources elsewhere. Why do I think they're not going to do this?
"... and lower than all but three Asian countries (Japan, Australia, and New Zealand)"
I read the fine article, but not the whole report. Wondering where this came from!
I used a megaphone to yell "HA, WE USE LINUX!"
Then I back-flipped onto a motorbike and sprayed them with sand.
Actually that might have been a dream.
Looks like Slashdot isn't above taking money from the BSA. In the bar above I see "Anti-Piracy Organization" - Rewards Offered up to $1 Million! It was a Google ad so I clicked on it, which hopefully costs them a few bucks.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Don't you guys get tired of being a stereotype? We get it--you don't believe piracy is bad, and any group that speaks out against piracy is wrong. You don't care about artist rights, blah blah blah. Do we really need a "piracy is great" rallying article every single day?
"Sweden has a low piracy rate but remains an area of concern because it is considered a safe haven for P2P Internet piracy sites. [...] It is estimated that more than 20 percent of these top sites are hosted in Sweden. One of them, the BitTorrent hub called "PirateBay," is one of the most trafficked Web sites in the world."
They can't even spell thepiratebay correctly.
"Factors helping to lower piracy - Technical advances: Digital rights management, embodied in programs like Microsoftâ(TM)s Windows Genuine Advantage, will lower piracy by encouraging customer self-audits and by offering services not available to users of non-legal software."
I had to laugh at that.
How did they bring piracy under control before, didn't they use hanging ?
Maybe that's what we have to do again.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
>Questions have also been raised over the BSA's methodology
BSA has a methodology?
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
Earlier in the week BSA representatives here in Sweden all but admitted that the figures for Sweden were made up.
http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror (sorry, link in Swedish only)
They used a combination of general estimates and figures for other countries. No Swedish businesses were involved in the study at all...
"the report ultimately undermined one of the BSA's core arguments -- that countries which enact DMCA-style legislation experience significantly reduced piracy rates"
.. beign crooks, they are prone to break it. Same with ID-cards, being pushed by the consumer sector to reduce Credit-Card fraud. All it will do is boost the trade in fake IDs ..
The fallacy being that the crooks will comply with the law, as
davecb5620@gmail.com
The study found seven countries with piracy rates of 90 percent or higher: Georgia, Bangladesh, Armenia, Zimbabwe, Sri Landa, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken? Is a surprise that people pirate in such conditions? Shouldn't there be some acceptance that in a country where physical property is hard to come by/keep that people ignore intangible property?
Roughly speaking the firm takes an estimate of the amount of computers shipped to individual companies, takes a further estimate of what software should be on those machines, and compares that, not to exact software sales, but to interviews with software vendors.
I don't see how such data gathering methods can give a legitimate support either, I don't think such sloppy researching would pass any scientific rigour, combine that with a test group of 6000 out of a supposed 6 billion and you8 don't have anything actually useful to go by. Its like setting up a small niche website and then estimating world web browser usage based on adding up the monthly percentages of visits from each browser.
and I mean that in a nice sort of way, as best /. is willing to allow
A pirated copy is not necessarily a lost sale. If you look at the highest rate list compared to the lowest rate list for countries you'll see that the countries with the highest rates of piracy generally have the lowest per capita GDP. This shows a link between ability to pay for software and actually paying for it.
To put a face on this, the recent college grad with a job at 7-11 and $50k in student loan debt is going to need tools to make the money needed to buy tools.
Another factor is the fact that the BSA still counts an install of Adobe's $2500 Master Suite on Mom's computer as being a lost sale. Trust me when I say that Mom only has that because she thought it was neat to paste pictures of her and Dad standing on top of the Eiffel tower. She does not use it commercially and therefore cannot justify spending $2500 on an idle amusement. If Adobe managed to make a DRM scheme that couldn't be cracked they still wouldn't get a sale from her. Instead she'd just go back to scissors and rubber cement.
In fact according to the BSA PDF.
Consumers generally install more software on their
computers, both new and old, than businesses. Hence,
while consumers account for 45 percent of PCs shipped,
they account for 55 percent of PC software deployed.
This fits well with the idea that consumers are installing professional software that is never used commercially.
Cost and ability to pay are the biggest factors of piracy. The BSA needs to segregate their report into two sections for consumer piracy and commercial piracy. Consumer piracy is less likely to be a lost sale than commercial piracy.
Furthermore, companies whose professional software packages may have consumer appeal might want to try performing a trial where they make the latest version of their software package available for free as a beta or time limited trial with semi-anonymous usage tracking to figure out exactly what patterns distinguish a professional user from someone just screwing around. This would allow the company to use this data to offer a mostly functional 'Home' version for dirt cheap that has just the right features disabled to make sure that professional users won't ever touch it. A home user of Photoshop, for example, will probably never work with 100MB images whereas a professional designing a poster or magazine spread will. Careful analysis and planning will allow these companies to actually make a few extra sales off of lower budget consumers without cutting into their customer base for professional users.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
BSA is killing at least 9 babies every day.
5 our of 10 RIAA employees snort crack.
MPAA responsible for 80% of Global Warming.
In line with the BSA methodology this has all been confirmed through the use of chicken intestines, tea leaves and and an unhealthy amount of LSD.
Michael Geist noted that the report ultimately undermined one of the BSA's core arguments -- that countries which enact DMCA-style legislation experience significantly reduced piracy rates.
Yeah, but you can't fight these guys with logic. All they'll say to that is "See? The problem is so bad in those countries we need *even stronger laws*!
Logic and evidence is pointless when the statistics and facts in this situation are so highly open to interpretation. That makes it problem solvable only by lobbying, not facts. Those of us who are against their draconian measures need to become as politically influential as they are - something that seems unlikely right now.
legitimate interests to protect. They are just going about it in a way that delegitimizes themselves and makes heroes out of thieves. It doesn't have to be that way.
What BSA members wants is a certain level of "leak" to make people get the taste for the software.
Many BSA members already publish a time-limited demo of their products and/or a feature-limited "lite" version (e.g. Photoshop Elements).
Sure ain't gonna buy it after going through all that trouble to steal it, now am I, hm? So you are right, I wouldn't buy it CUZ I CAN STEALZ IT!! It's my right, after all. It's what the Internet is all about. Am I right people or am I right? Are you with me or are you agin' me? Are you PRO-FREE or are you PRO-UNFREE!!
They can't even spell thepiratebay correctly.
I wonder if eBay has threatened Thepirat eBay.
Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war
Probably because many of the BSA's biggest members, such as Microsoft, are headquartered in a country that is still fighting a major war.
Its like setting up a small niche website and then estimating world web browser usage based on adding up the monthly percentages of visits from each browser.
Yet Slashdot users so often brag about declines in Windows Internet Explorer's share at w3schools.
But few people will ever hear the truth so the lie will be perpetuated, and laws will continue to be passed, and more restrictions will be put into place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Questions have also been raised over the BSA's methodology," If I remember right the best "methodology" BSA had was to get disgruntled employees to turn the company in for the satisfaction of watching the boss squirm. Only problem was, once accused, you were guilty until proven innocent; I.E. the burden of proof rests on the defendant. Great business model. BSA asshats ftw
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
One of their key 'facts' that the BSA uses to demonstrate that pirating is endemic in poor countries (in the executive summary of the report) -
"While emerging economies account for 45 percent of the global PC hardware market, they account for less than 20 percent of the PC software market."
So, if a poorer person wants a computer only to be able to browse the internet and handle email, that means he's a pirate. Because richer people routinely also pay for MS Office for letters, and MS Money for banking, etc., that automatically means that the poorer person is also using the same software, only not paying for it.
as you can see, they just have to raise their estimates of "how much software a PC needs" to skyrocket the piracy... also they don't consider people using older versions of software, so all in all their piracy report means nothing more than "we would have wanted to sell THIS much more software!"
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The Broken Software Association (BSA), have always spun their own stories to feed their corporate masters. These are the hench men of the gang bosses of the software world. They are much like the brown-shirts of another jackbooted era. They still like kicking doors in, and making people suffer though. Its their job. They acknowledge that there is another way, they just don't really like it (no fun in that), and if their gang bosses get all crazy with 'oh, the software patent is reeeallly ours, get 'em', then their jack boots will try to stomp first and ask questions later. You don't have to be a brainless thug to work for them, it just helps a whole lot.
and that makes me a pirate...
I think people are missing the REALLY bad news from this data- that even in countries without a software market (high piracy), free options like Linux STILL fail to compete.
It's the death of a talking point. They aren't "forced" to use Windows, since they aren't buying new computers. They can use anything... yet they would rather STEAL Windows than legitimately use a free Linux.
If Linux were somehow a viable option if only it weren't for that evil old Microsoft forcing everyone to use it... then why isn't Linux thriving in markets without a Microsoft presence?
So, if the BSA comes into my company and finds that we have $10,000 in paid licenses that we aren't using, will they give us a check?
We've been switching everything to Linux and other FOSS the last year just because keeping up with licenses isn't worth it.
Don't you guys get tired of being a stereotype? We get it--you don't believe piracy is bad, and any group that speaks out against piracy is wrong. You don't care about artist rights, blah blah blah. Do we really need a "piracy is great" rallying article every single day?
Yes. You're lucky more people aren't doing it. Just a tiny response to the tsunami of propaganda that parasitic middlemen propagate.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
The internet exists to link people and computers together. It is not designed to make money,
Tell that to eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Google, and iTunes. If these online companies were not making money and showing a constant stream of profit, they would not still be on the internet to this day.
eBay, PayPal, and Amazon, make money as 'middlemen' to the physical enconomy comprising largely of the buying and selling of 3-dimensional objects. Should 'replicator technology' seen in STAR TREK become a reality, they will become unecessary and will fall by the wayside of history.
Google makes money as an ad agency that happens to own and operate a wildly popular internet search engine and a complete copy of the non-binary portion of USENET via Google Groups. Once somebody comes up with a search engine that is consistently better than Google and mirrors Google Groups in its entirety, they too will fall by the wayside of history as well.
iTunes makes money by selling 'digital downloads' of pieces of popular culture (primarily music). They are proof that it is possible to make money online selling non 3-dimensional objects. Once their entire catalogue of downloads is available for free online elsewhere on the internet, they too will fall by the wayside of history as well.
As the parent poster said, the internet exists to link people and computers together--it also exists to exchange information in the form of computer files. The media cartels realize the internet can distribute (their) content cheaper and faster (and illegally) than they can which will eventually make them fall by the wayside of history as well. There response to this looming threat in the past shows that they are desparate and will do ANYTHING to continue to exist. This is simply self-preservation in action.
The simplest answer(path) is often the correct answer(path).
Global Software Piracy (GSP) as we know it, has been on full force for about 20 years now. I have yet had any clear evidence that this has harmed the social structure or failed an economy business (that wasn't doomed to start with) to date.
GSP hasn't stopped, slowed or derailed businesses like Microsoft, Time Warner, IBM, Cisco, Intel, ATI, Sun, Sony, MGM, Paramount, New Line, BMG Records, BlockBuster, Netflix, etc, etc. All of these companies, if they want to admit to it or not, have benefit 100% from GSP. GSP is a marketing force you can not buy or own. It is the ultimate make or break for your product.
When your government who is controlled by the companies who are so clearly trying to hang on to the captialism rope as long as possible, don't want it gone. They will do anything to hold on and prevent the free information to the masses.
You know, I think what we need is a perfect, un-breakable DRM scheme that anyone can freely implement to protect their "precious" software.
Guess what would happen: The market share and quality of open source software and alternative artists would EXPLODE to never-before seen heights. And all the stupid corporations bitching about lost profits would finally be forced to face the truth, which is that people will never again pay as much for software and music as they did before they were all interconnected.
So maybe, for the sake of the open source and anti-copyright movement, we should work on just that: A DRM scheme which cannot be broken, so that the idiot vendors can lock themselves out into oblivion if so they wish.
It just means people have found a way to make money using it.
And some want to stop them being able to do so (see all the "you're infringing our copyrights!!!" against google.