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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."
When you're in a position of power for a long time and an alternative comes along, what do you do? You assert control in any way you possibly can. Not that that's a good thing, but that's the way it goes.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
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.
> BSA has a methodology?
Yup. "Sue no matter what."
They break in to your place of business, having convinced federal marshals that you would destroy all the evidence on your computers if they didn't. Then they take all your computers, based on whatever tip they got from an ex-employee or other anonymous source and had a judge sign off on while you weren't there (hearing held ex parte). They run their own infringement finding software that attempts to scan your network and seize all the computers they can, shutting you down whether you were guilty or not.
Finally, they sue you unless you can provided dated purchase orders for each and every computer and piece of software. Yes, every. And no, the little "Genuine Windows" sticker on the PCs won't save you. It doesn't count.
After this, you get dragged into court and urge you to settle for $bignum while getting really expensive site license agreements that protect you so long as you pay them way more than all your software is actually worth. This has never happened to me personally, but I refer you to the case of Ernie Ball.