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BSA Says 41% of Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated
An anonymous reader writes "Individuals are turning to P2P networks and auction sites in staggering numbers to acquire or transfer illegal software and in doing so are harming the economy whilst exposing themselves to malware, identity theft and criminal prosecution, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance. Beyond P2P and auction site piracy, the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware, which often exploit vulnerabilities in illegal software that does not benefit from security updates provided by manufacturers. Although the correlation is not universal, geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware."
While you're guessing with such precision, why not choose 42% and grab more nerd eyes?
Their first graph (which is in percentages, but they don't label the scale LOL) shows remarkably low rates of malware, and an alleged piracy rate (whatever that is) that is 4-10x higher.
Maybe they should check out http://garwarner.blogspot.com/
BSA+RIAA+MPAA=organizations that make up stories and wait for their fake "facts" to be reused by their legislative bought henchmen.
E
Speaking as an MBA, their unsubstantiated numbers and pretty graphs is good enough for me. I'm going to delete 41% of the software on my machines to make sure I'm not a crook!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
What a lousy article - all puff and no content:
- The FA discusses online auction sites as a "hotbed" of trading illegal software. But it doesn't say whether the BSA distinguish between online auctions offering cracked copies for download, pirated installation media or perfectly legitimate resale of software which the seller has no further use for.
- There's no real explanation of how they reached this figure - do they assume a single person using a torrent installs the software once? Twice? Never? Once then decides they don't really need it so uninstalls it?
- Even if the BSA did explain how they reached this figure, how do we know that their methodology is sound and gives reasonably accurate answers? AFAIK there is no methodology that is generally known to give accurate answers to the question of "how many PCs have application X installed, where X may or may not phone home and there may or may not be cracked versions of X in the wild which modify any existing phone-home functionality?"
Thing is, the BSA must know that these numbers are not reliable and that they can't get reliable numbers. I think the reason this article exists is the BSA are seeding the news wires. Who wants to bet that the next thing they'll do is lobby representatives in governments around the world using these bullshit figures and that's the only reason the figures exist?
Maybe one reason for such a poor correlation between alleged copyright infringement and malware rates is that most who engage in and enable copyright infringement actually do have higher ethics than some companies which deliberately add creepy spyware and malware-like features to their applications in the name of controlling what user's do. Indeed, I wonder if some even explicitly choose copyright infringement sources simply to get spy and malware disabled versions of certain applications.
I'm not sure what the deal is these days but for years, where I worked, there was a deal with Microsoft whereby employees could install Office at home for free. Pretty sure that was the licence arrangment with MS rather than the firms coughing up for licenses.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Oh, but wait... it's a BSA report, which means anyone with a brain already KNOWS it's bullshit. Unfortunately, that means most members of Congress thinking it's true, and I suspect that's their intended audience. It's certainly a not "report" aimed at us. Their goal is to get more laws passed to make them and their masters money, extracted by law from everyone whether they have ever used any of the software in question or not. Another tax on blank media, anyone? How about one on hard drives, CPUs and other components? Pay by the megabyte for connectivity, because obviously we're stealing software? All they have to do is convince Congress-critters it's a good idea, which seems to be shockingly easy to do if you supply enough cash.
The other 59% of disk space occupied by legal software consists entirely of Adobe Reader.
MMO Vampire Role Playing
Correlation does not imply causation.
As a Ubuntu user, I can say precisely 0% of the software on my PC is pirated AND I have no issues with malware, viruses, trojans, etc. (according to ClamAV anyway). In fact, probably 99% of the software I run is free & open source. The only proprietary software I use for the time being is Adobe Flash and the ATI Radeon driver, both legally obtained.
I know we'd all like to say that there is no link between illegally copied software (I refuse to use the word "pirated") and malware, but I'm sure we've all seen instances where relatives' PCs got infected by software downloaded from Kazaa, etc.
What really surprises me is that, when given the choice between maybe catching viruses or getting prosecuted for downloading/installing illegal software and using the free and legal open source equivalent, so many people still choose to download their software illegally. I have to say, as a full-time user and software developer, Ubuntu's offering is really, really well put-together and a pleasure to use.
1) Can't measure it - you can't measure how many people downloaded your software through illicit channels because, by definition, those channels are usually unmonitored, don't keep logs, and aren't subject to easy investigation. You might be able to measure a particular computer at a particular point in time but any measurement being done on "behalf of" the BSA is going to be worthless. You'd have to randomly monitor thousands of PC's in dozens of categories (home, business, mobile, poweruser, etc.) and get permission to report on any "unlicensed" software there, and then chase it up with the company concerned to see if it was actually unlicensed (rather than just using the wrong VLK or similar for convenience).
2) Can't compare it - the chances of those metrics being stable across such countries as Turkey and the US are unlikely.
3) Can't correlate it - Just because malware goes up with pirated installations doesn't mean anything - it just means that the pirates prefer to download porn which may or may not introduce malware... it doesn't mean the malware is in the pirate software.
Statistics are worthless quoted out of context. We have no idea what was measured, how, why, what bias was introduced by the measures, or anything else.
To be honest, I imagine the percentage to be *higher*... I've seen dozens of people with Winzip on their computers who haven't actually bought it but they heard they needed it to open ZIP files. I've seen dozens of work laptops come back with full installations of football games, office, etc.... technically that's copyright infringement ("software piracy") because it's a breach of the license. I expect the true figure to be nearer 80 or 90%.
But then you have the reasoning that it's somehow linked to malware in any way other than "people get malware too"... almost 100% of the home PC's I see have items of malware on them (again, depending on your definition).
If you want to say "copyright infringement is bad and puts £5 on the cost of every game you buy, or £50 on the price of Office", people would listen. Making up bollocks statistics about nonsense correlations just makes me switch off and let's me know that, actually, you're just trying to scare me into buying things because you can't think any other way would work (and thus don't understand software "piracy" at all). I don't pirate, either at work or at home. I just move things to open-source if I can't afford the real package, and I never buy anything without a demo. No demo, no trial version, no purchase. I also don't buy anything with DRM that interferes with my usage of the product. I'm not alone.
Stop spending your time analysing vague correlations and look at those statistics about why people pirate in the first place. Almost always it's cost, convenience and because a certain percentage of those "pirate" downloads are actually your own customers just trying to get the bloody thing working (I've had to break DRM schemes in work in order to be able to install compliant to our licensing - it was tons easier than our negotiating with the company in question to do the same thing). Be open with those stats and then things get interesting: How many pirates, on average, end up revealing upon further investigation that they *already* own the software in question, but the DRM got in the way? Or that they lost the install disk? Or that they needed original media to recover their PC's and it wasn't supplied by the manufacturer? I've seen all three of those and even done the second myself - I needed a particular install disk and it was an emergency and the person I was working for didn't have the original disk to hand. After I ensured that they were entitled to the licences, I just downloaded one and used that instead (after checksum verification). Does that contribute as being "another" PC with pirate software?
harming the economy
Right, like they would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.
I love this bullshit. As you say, there's no way of telling how many percent of those who pirated would actually buy the software at hand. In my experience often people pirate because they're lazy, meaning they know some program from a while back and instead of looking for a free alternative they just pirate it because they're used to it. But also sometimes they actually need that program, however more often they don't.
Also it's very easy to throw expressions such as "harming the economy" around. But let's think about what this means. If, and we have to remember the big if here, there would be a significant increase in such sales -- instead of people looking for free and/or open source alternatives (which by the way is already happening, anyway let's continue with the hypothesis) -- then in an international aspect this would harm the economy as the national currency would be weakened due to less trade. HOWEVER (one of those important caps moments) -- don't forget that piracy is also an international phenomenon, meaning if all countries have 10% piracy it would be -- in terms of economic balance, exactly the same as if we had 0% -- or 80%.
What about national level? Well at national level the currency would merely shift towards those selling the software, as they collect the fees.
What about the personal economy? Well you would have a slightly stronger currency (given that other countries ignore piracy) yet you would still, at a personal level, make a loss.
Now let's ignore the moral aspects here, you can yell theft all you want but that's another discussion. This discussion was about the economy and how someone tries to bullshit you from this angle to change your mind. Change your mind for the right reasons, if you consider it theft then fine, but don't eat whatever crap that's thrown at you. By using the expressions such as "economy", a very big machine which can be difficult to understand, you can persuade somebody into a lot of things, since ultimately they will tend to feel stupid because they cannot break down the concept and understand how this hurts the economy -- you see no explanation is given, and that's the point of the argument. So if you feel stupid, that's even more of a reason to ask the question: why?
I am the lawn!
BSA Says 41% Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated
Well customers choose linux because Apps are easier to pirate. Steve Winfield of Microsoft's anti-FOSS Partner Technology Team (a.k.a. Delta Force) says so. It must be true.
In other news, sources not partnered with Microsoft announce that Microsoft's desktop market share has dipped down to 59%. Between Conficker and Internet banking exploits, it could happen.
Seriously, better check the BSA's definition of 'pirated'. Previous announcements like this turned out to classify any non-MS software as 'pirated'.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
As always, it is unclear just what they consider "pirated". For example, if your company purchases 100% legitimate software via eBay, the BSA will not accept this as your software during an audit. They refuse to accept any and all eBay receipts. Hence, it is quite likely that they have counted all purchases via auction sites as pirated, even though this is clearly not true.
This is only one of many "rules" they apply that make little or no sense. Did you know that possessing the complete packaging of a program, including the original CD/DVD and the enclosed license certificate is, according to the BSA, not proof of ownership? You must have an original receipt, with the company (or individual) name correctly spelled, which explicitly lists the product and version.
The BSA may once have been a way to combat piracy'it has evolved into a monstrosity. Microsoft, Adobe and the other companies should terminate their relationships with it and start over.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.