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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.
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...
Don't you guys get tired of being wrong all the time? We get it-you don't believe facts carry much weight, and any group of people that points this out must have ulterior motives. You don't care about personal freedom, blah blah blah. Do we really need a "consume and conform" response to every article every single day?
You see what I did there?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
"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.
Supporting organizations and laws that take away the rights from both artists and consumers does not make you "pro-artist", it just makes you gullible if you think it does.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
You don't "get it". Artist's rights are one thing - what the *iaa's are doing is quite another thing. If the various enforcement gestapos could be controlled, and set on a CONSTRUCTIVE PATH, then we might actually be able to address what an artist's rights might be. Today, copyright and patent laws are being abused, twisted into unrecognizable abortions, and the PEOPLE'S RIGHTS are being trampled.
You're an artist? Great. How much money has your "label" made, and how much have you made from your art? Is the ratio something like 1000/1, or 10,000/1, or maybe even more?
The mafiaa people don't give jack shit about you, any more than they care about the customers. You are an asset, nothing more, and nothing less, and you are as expendable as an office chair.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
There is a lot of hot air in claims from the BSA about losing so and so much money.
The reality would be that much of the software that's in use illegally is by people that wouldn't have purchased it in the first case. So if it was completely impossible to pirate the software then it wouldn't be purchased at all.
What BSA members wants is a certain level of "leak" to make people get the taste for the software.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
I Guess that makes Suge Knight the Steve Ballmer of the Rap world ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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).
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
It has never been the artists who collect on anything except for their live performances. From the moment they sign their contracts, they are "in debt" to the music publishers for marketing and advertising service fees. All the money made in selling records, tapes, CDs and MP3s is collected by the labels. The artists barely and rarely get any of that money.
If ever there was an "ulterior motive" it is the RIAA claiming "artists" when they should be claiming their employers... the labels... the publishers!
As for software piracy claims? I'm okay with their reporting the truth. If they aren't reporting the truth, I have a problem with it. And the DMCA and laws like it were supposed to help and it hasn't. Instead, it only harms individual consumers.
The sad thing is that the music of independent artists is also being pirated, though to a lesser degree. They have no means of recompense whatsoever, in fact attempts to deter piracy are so prohibitively unpopular that the MAFIAA has a monopoly on effective countermeasures.
Come to think of it, probably the best thing the MAFIAA could do would be an ad campaign that tells true stories of *indie* artists whose careers have been compromised by piracy. Then people might realize how many brilliant artists still have day jobs as a direct result of piracy.
"Here's Johnny on tour, rocking a crowd of 1500. Here he is again, busing dishes at Boston Pizza. Here's a customer, leaving a fat tip for the cute waitress while he fires up Johnny's songs he downloaded illegally to his iPod."
As a touring musician and sound tech, I see that exact scenario playing out *all the time*. We accept that piracy laws are unenforceable, yet still do what we do because it's our passion. However the justifications for piracy are a little tough to bear. It's incomprehensible to us that people should be offended by the notion of paying for every song and/or movie in their collection.
Think if that happened to your industry. You'd quit and do something else, right? Do you want all your favorite musicians/actors/directors to quit? They're going to retire eventually, who will take their place? All the good upstarts are too busy busing dishes to practice.
In four days I'm leaving on a tour where I'll be playing 25 shows in 24 days, lugging my gear myself, sleeping in a lot of shitholes, averaging 300 miles of driving per day. I dare anyone to whine about being held accountable for piracy when I get back.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Think if that happened to your industry. You'd quit and do something else, right?
Actually i'm in the software industry and it happens alot (tho not as completely as music), i've moved on to a business model that is service based (software services) before the bottom totally falls out and release much of my software for free as open source projects.
I'm happier than I was before and make the same (actually a little more) money.
Just because you're clinging to a failing business model in an industry with a devastating monopoly (records studios) preventing indies from getting anywhere serious doesn't mean I should feel sorry for you or even care.
Maybe if enough of you started joining places like Magnatune things could change for the better.
Downloads are not profitable. They have never been profitable. The internet exists to link people and computers together. It is not designed to make money, and it is not going to contort itself into some bizarre shape involving DRM and other nonsense just because you want some cash. If you need the money, make it on concert swag and CDs (yes, people actually do still buy those, if you sell them!) like people used to. You don't need the internet to make money. The only reason you have for using the internet is buzzword-compliance. I'm sorry that you're unable to make money on the internet, but pre-internet indie bands were facing much tougher challenges (more expensive equipment, no internet to sell their mp3s on, etc.) and still did fine.
$ make available
There is a lot of hot air in claims from the BSA about losing so and so much money.
The simple fact is usage of digital information will eventually be the driver behind new laws. How, when and where we use information can no longer be controlled by various corporate entities. It may take a little while for legislation to catch up, but catch up it will. Until that time hot air will continue to be expended on both sides whilst the rest of us are busy copying, sharing, promoting . . .
Whilst I gave up touring in a similar gig myself a few years ago, it was always the case that conditions are pretty bad on tour.
Instead of moaning about that why not get another line of work if you dislike the conditions under which you work-thats what I did. I now play mainly for enjoyment, but I still play-face it the music scene is one in which you get involved for the pleasure not the money. If you think you will make a fortune you are probably deluded.
Nearly all the acts I worked and played with made all of their money from live playing. Its a tough life but if you love it you are prepared to accept the downside. In all my time I never bitched about copyright!
Windows Genuine Advantage sure worked for me, I've been running Linux for years now.
I prefer not to allow spy-ware on my systems, why should I? The vast majority of PC systems come with windows pre-installed, microsoft already got paid sale done. There can be no justification for treating their customers as criminals. In the USA if the Police were performing random warrant-less searches any thing found would be inadmissible in a court of law, so why should a software company be allowed to do what is illegal for the police to do?
In my country if a security guard was to stop a shopper and search their bag and find no evidence of stolen goods the shopper could then choose to sue the security company for defamation of character usually resulting in a cash award of 10-20 thousand euro. Surely Microsoft are pretty much doing the same thing.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
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.
Ehhh, don't feel to lonely. I used to work construction. I also used to drive a truck. Canadians and Mexicans both are taking over the trucking industry, the Mexicans took over the construction en masse. I couldn't BUY a job in either field today. Know what? There are no laws to protect me, or the tens of thousands of other people like me. I LIKE working with my hands, making wood, concrete, and iron take shape. That's a thing of the past. With the economy in the shape it's in, even the Mexicans aren't finding any work at subsistence wages.
Remind me to feel sorry for the guy who washes dishes 3 or 4 days a week, then plays with a band on the weekends.
Instead of moaning about that why not get another line of work if you dislike the conditions under which you work
I covered that in the parent post:
"Think if that happened to your industry. You'd quit and do something else, right? Do you want all your favorite musicians/actors/directors to quit? They're going to retire eventually, who will take their place? All the good upstarts are too busy busing dishes to practice."
To that I will add that an artist worth downloading is worth supporting. No support, no more art.
In all my time I never bitched about copyright!
How many albums did you record? How much did they cost to produce?
Or did you play mostly covers? No doubt you never complained about copyright!
We're touring our sixth album which cost over $10k to produce and press 1000 copies (relatively cheap but we like it raw). We do quite well considering our sound isn't mainstream, but if we were to lose even 20% of our sales to piracy, we would only record an occasional single to keep our name out there. The numbers on mainstream piracy are well over 40%.
Not to mention, who takes the theft of work they take pride in sitting down? I sure don't.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
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.
Um, its not theft. its copyright infringement. Totally different and barely comparable in spite of what the music and movie studios would like you to think.
If you wre lucky enough to have 40% piracy then you would be selling an order of magnitude more records (that whole popularity thing). You would be doing alot better than you are now. Sure losing 40% sucks, but its 40% of a much bigger pie.
Another problem in today's day and age is that the global population and the ability to interact with them has reached the point where there is a heavy saturation of "artists" as compared with the ability to "consume" the artists product. There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of "amateur artists" out there vying for what is in essence not alot of the populations time.
Global distribution technologies means a single mega artist can fill one of a few dozen slots in the average persons time spread across the global population. Get a few dozen mega artists and there really isn't any time for the newer independent talent. This is part of the secret of the studios. They spend all their time filling those slots and souting for the next thing to fill them. All they have to do, is find someone, cross market them with an existing artist in one of those slots. If they can stand on their own they get a slot and someone gets bumped, if they can't they get thrown back to the wolves with a pile of debt.
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.
Now, this isn't meant to be flamebait, it's an honest question:
Isn't the BSA really just a front for Microsoft? Isn't most (virtually all) of their business cracking down on pirated installs of Server 2000, Office, and SQL Server?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
>>Downloads are not profitable. They have never been profitable.
Considering the enormous flop iTunes were, I guess you are right.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Notice that the GP didn't support said organisations. He was against piracy, which is a problem independent of said organisations, and which does deprive artists of their rights.
It's a frighteningly common conflation here on slashdot. How would you respond if I told you that if you're against the BSA, you just want all software for yourself for free? Exactly.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It's part of the same reality that people use this to falsely justify their downloads, and deflate the value that they perceived they pirated. It seems sensible to err on the side of caution here.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
However the justifications for piracy are a little tough to bear. It's incomprehensible to us that people should be offended by the notion of paying for every song and/or movie in their collection.
I'm offended by having to buy four copies to play in four different places. If I buy a CD - and I do - I want to be able to listen to it at home, in my car and on my MP3 player. I only download for free those tracks that are offered for free by the artist/vendor. Amazon.com has free tracks from time to time. So does Janis Ian. So do other MP3 sites. Stop pretending that I'm hurting you because you only sold be a CD and couldn't get me to buy all the different formats you can think up.
problem is, not all that download the music can truely afford to. However since they do, if it's any good it'll get airtime with friends, family and potentially get you more people to the next gig. What i see all the time is people who'd never buy music but will download it and get a liking for it, end up wanting to see them live and would pay for that. Guess it's like a preview system so to say, but if you're music is 5bucks n album I think i know plenty of people that'd gladly hand it over if the music is good.
In this day n age I'd be glad to be receiving any money, funds are tight and seems to be millions of bands to choose from. The real money-maker for bands should be the touring, but if it's not that feasable than either the band hasn't got enough coverage (piracy can actually help here, or releasing 1 or 2 good songs for free even) or the band just isn't as good as they think. Sometimes people expect to be raking it in just for making a song, even if the song is total shit.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
20% sales lost to piracy though isn't anything to go by, a person can download a million songs and have barely enough cash to get internet access let alone buy those songs. It's nice to think each piece of pirated work would bring you in cash but in the real world it cannot work. A potential customer is still not a customer until the cash is in hand, maybe ask yourselves why they are turning to pirate the stuff vs buying, is it they want it for free? (never will be a customer, or not at this point) They think it costs too much?(Possibly lower costs, or offer singles for sale instead of an album with 2songs good, the rest boring people to tears).
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
Perhaps if you concentrated and made a quality product that is not "cheap an raw" you might get somewhere, though that might be protecting you from being pirated, no point in stealing rubbish.
10K wouldnt even pay a half decent producer.
If you want top play original music, you should accept right from the start that you are doing it for pleasure only. The chances of making a decent living are extremely remote, especially when you set yourself up to fail by being as you put it "not mainstream".
When I was still recording originals (Most of my playing time was in original bands, we did 3 albums in total)the whole band accepted that right from the start.
Reality is the music industry has been a giant garbage recycling industry since the mid 80's
Art for arts sake you see.
If you dont like the facts get a real job.