BSA 2010 Piracy Report: $58.8 Billion

Glyn Moody writes "The annual BSA report on software piracy is out, with even bigger numbers: 'The commercial value of software piracy grew 14 percent globally last year to a record total of $58.8 billion.' Yes, they're using the old 'commercial value' trick: 'The commercial value of pirated software is the value of unlicensed software installed in a given year, as if it had been sold in the market.' Except, of course, that the main reason users in developing countries — the main focus of the report — resort to piracy is because they can't afford Western-style pricing. It's also fun to see the BSA trotting out the old 'reducing piracy would generate lots of new jobs and taxes for local governments' — except that it doesn't, because the money not paid for software licences does not disappear, but is just spent elsewhere in the local economy."

Comments

reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[poetmatt]

Getting rid of the BSA would do wonders for local economies around the globe. If we didn't have this grandstanding of false piracy people could get on with their lives instead of watching as government lobbied by the BSA bends over for them and does their bidding, going directly against the desires of their constituents.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

The BSA isn't right, nor is it wrong. I might understand stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, *might*, but stealing software because you can't afford it doesn't fly with me. Nor does misrepresenting facts and figures to confuse and obfuscate public policy, ala "lobbying", fly with me either. 2.5 cents.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[mister_playboy]

confuse and obfuscate public policy

You talk of "stealing" software... seems their obfuscation is working.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[mikael_j]

Copying isn't stealing. Theft is not copyright infringement from a legal point of view either so the law agrees with me on this one.

Would you consider it wrong to replicate a loaf of bread?

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[JambisJubilee]

Sorry, pirating software is not stealing software. The premise behind calling it "stealing" is that, if you did not pirate the software, you would have paid for it. That is so demonstrably false I don't know where you're coming from. I know a guy who has both software he purchased legitimately (Portal 2, Minecraft) and software he has pirated (Adobe CS, Comsol). It's obvious that no sales were lost in any of the pirated cases.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Said. Wish I had mod points.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Actually, it could be argued that FULL cooperation with the BSA would generate the most local jobs, as companies would then be forced to shift to open source to avoid the expense and hassle of complying with proprietary licensing.

Let's be honest - if it became impossible to run pirated versions of MS-Windows and MS-Office tomorrow, this would be the year of the linux desktop, and any money that would have been spent on licensing could be spent locally instead, on deploying open solutions, training, and customizing.

So, if you really want to support open source and your local economy, report software piracy today!

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[metacell]

When you steal, you're depriving someone of the thing you steal.

Copying something doesn't deprive the original owner of it. Unauthorised copying is only illegal because our forefathers believed publishers needed a time-limited monopoly on artistic and literary works in order to publish them (and also because of the political maneuvering of said publishers). If that assumption is mostly wrong, there's no reason to restrict copying.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[gonk]

Wow. People can justify anything, I guess. He is using someone's work without their permission, period, end of story. I don't care what you call it, it is morally wrong and it is illegal.

robert

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

When one side is right, and the other is wrong, "half wrong" is not a reasonable stance to take.

It's not stealing.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

Well I guess we should all just go to your place of work and 'pirate' whatever it is you do for a living. Yar!!!

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

>>>He is using someone's work without their permission, period, end of story. I don't care what you call it, it is morally wrong

So?
I bet you sped in your car to work this morning (driving 65 in a 55 zone)(or 70+ in a 65 zone), and not only is that morally wrong, but also deadly to other people. ""Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Robert Zenz]

Well, then I suggest we call it rape or murder from now on!

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[CreepingDeath]

Please; clearly explain to me how (making an example up here) that me downloading Adobe FooBar from a bit torrent network costs Adobe anything? I (as a hypothetical student here) cannot afford FooBar, so I there is no chance of me buying a copy.

Basically, if copying is stealing then me taking a PHOTO of you is stealing you.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

stealing software because you can't afford it doesn't fly with me. .

That bird won't fly because you are misunderstanding what piracy is. It seems that you have inadvertently drank the BSA's Kool-aid. When something is pirated nothing is lost or stolen, no one is deprived of anything. Instead of comparing piracy to stealing a stereo compare it to sneaking a peak at the bearded lady through a hole in her tent: she hasn't lost anything and you probably weren't going to pay anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support piracy. In fact I go out of my way to support the content producers: I only buy new games and movies, I don't rent or buy used. I buy tickets to support bands and when I can't attend a concert I buy their merchandise (I don't by CDs but I don't download music either). Demonizing piracy into something worse than it actually is is just pandering to anti consumer organizations such as the BSA.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[rjmx]

Can we have an equivalent to Godwin's Law so that, as soon as someone says "end of story", they automatically lose the argument?

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[bigbird]

You made the mistake of using the term "stealing" instead of "infringing copyright". Those on slashdot who have probably never written a line of code in their life will latch on to this like ticks, and avoid the real issue - that infringing copyright costs software developers money. The BSA may exaggerate the amounts, many infringers may not have bought the software if they had to pay, but some sales and some income is undoubtably lost.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to spread free software and encourage its use as much as anyone else, but doing something I find morally sickening such as reporting software "piracy" is not the right way to go about it. Free software is about your ability to share the software, if you attack people for doing exactly that - sharing the software, you're doing free software no good service.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

>>>The BSA isn't right, nor is it wrong. I might understand stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, *might*, but stealing software because you can't afford it doesn't fly with me
>>>

How about stealing software because it's worthless trash? Like the Limewire I pirated, discovered it was junk, and erased it. Saved myself ~$80 (versus my niece who foolishly bought it legally).

Same with movies/songs. I've saved tons of cash by NOT buying shitty crap like Transformers 2, Spiderman 3, Linkin Park, and so on. At one time, preinternet, I used to throw-away money on cassettes but now I can "try before I buy".

We as consumers have a RIGHT to return shoddy shit to the manufacturer, and if we're not allowed to do that, then we have a right to sample the product before purchase (just like you can testdrive a car before getting screwed by GM, Ford, VW, etc).

BTW it's not a loss if the customer had zero intent of buying your product. Walmart didn't "lose" 100 billion last year, because some of their customers walked-out the door without buying anything. (Although I bet walmart would love to claim that they did "lose" that money.) Stop falling for marketing bullshit. Stop being gullible.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[MurukeshM]

While I'm on your side here, it should be more like you CLONING the parent, taking photograph does not give you a copy which does everything the original can do. But I feel that copyrights and patents are in effect for too long. With rapidly changing tech, even 10 years is too long. There must be a clause that once you copyright a product you must open source it (or its equivalent) at the end of the copyright term, and renewals should not happen.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

No kidding, I stirred the hornets’ nest. Well I can play that smart guy game. So 'pirating' isn't stealing because it's really 'copying' and idea which doesn't exist. Well the chemicals in my brain I real, and the ideas they create are used to create real things.

So how about all these smart guys show what they’ve created. I'll start. As you can see, this 'not real' idea is used in the very real automotive industry, and generates very real millions for my former employer. It's kind of nice to own a car that doesn't rust quite as fast as it might have otherwise... but what the heck, it's just an idea. Nobody should have paid me anything.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[hedwards]

Citation necessary. The marginal cost of copies after the first is precisely zero for software. Same goes for digital music and photos. Infringement costs developers money the same way that refusing to buy the product costs them money. Which is to say that it doesn't cost them any money because it was never money they would have gotten in the first place. More often than not it's money that doesn't even exist.

You can't say that some sales and income were undoubtedly lost without some sort of citation or evidence that it's the case. You assume that, in the absence of piracy, that some of those people would have purchased, but there's no basis for the assumption beyond the notion that somebody likely would have paid. Maybe somebody would or maybe somebody wouldn't have, but it's completely speculative as we don't know what would have happened.

OTOH if you're spending resources on support that would be completely different.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

>>>some sales and some income is undoubtably lost.

Yes but only a few million, not billions.

Thomas Jefferson considered freedom from copyright and patent lawsand other monopolies to be of similar importance to freedom of speech, religion, and the press. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:

          "I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our
          new constitution by nine states. It is a good
          canvas, on which some strokes only want
          re-touching...it is better to establish trials by jury,
          the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press
          and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish
          standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in
          all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying
          there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements
          to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a
          monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the
          benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to
          be opposed to that of their general suppression."

i.e. He was against the copyright monopoly. He said that Ideas, like fire, can be shared without diminishing the value to the originator, and appears to be designed by Nature for the mutual benefit of all humanity. Personally I don't mind a LIMITED monopoly, in the same sense that the Power Company is limited, but the present 100+ year terms is just nuts. If an author or company can not make profit during the first 14 years of the new book, song, or program's creation, then tough shit for them.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Batmunk2000]

The BSA is a pretty corrupt and messed up organization... but the radical opposite viewpoint is absurd. There needs to be reasonable protection for the works of our brains. There MUST be some form of digital ownership laws. The radical arguments presented here mean that Facebook has every right to sell personal information of their customers because simply because they have copies of it.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[g0bshiTe]

Hear hear, now we need to apply this logic to the US Government so we can all prosper, though their theft is much different but the scale of which is mind bottling.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

Just because it's not a loss doesn't me you have the right to it. That's like saying "Hey, he wasn't using that car, so why does he care that I stole it."

All I'm saying is that the BSA misrepresents the monetary losses by claiming pirated software is a lost sale. But that does not make it right to steal.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[dragonhunter21]

I thought that was implied.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

Tomas Jefferson also owned slaves, and thought the wealth of America was in its agriculture and not its manufacturing. I know a bit of history too.

Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code or had an original thought in your life. Nothing is stopping anyone from making their own Photoshop and giving it away to the world for free. It's called GIMP.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[jank1887]

By possessing and using a copy of Foobar, you have to some decreased demand for Foobar in the marketplace. You are also arguably making use of Foobar without paying for it, hence producing higher quality output at lower cost because you've found illegal ways of reducing your costs. You make it harder for someone to compete using software they paid for, simply because they have a legitimate cost basis for their product. If this software is superior to free alternatives, then you are also illegitimately reducing your time/effort (cost) in producing that output relative to someone else who is trying to legitimately reduce their cost basis through free software.

If you've downloaded and installed it but don't actually use it, then you're completely irrelevant. If you are using it, you're disturbing the market whether you want to or not.

I fully recognize that supply and demand is broken for software. But price is still somewhat set by demand. In addition, development of alternatives is driven by demand. If enough people wanted an affordable alternative, one would appear, or a Free software option would get enough attention to eventually be cost competitive. But not if the demand is satisfied by illegal acquisition. (I didn't say theft)

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[g0bshiTe]

Infringing copyright costing software developers money assumes, that those doing the infringing are profiting in some way from the software developers work. Most pirated things I have seen have been made public by the pirates for free as in air. So in this case who is profiting? I'd point the finger squarely at the person which downloaded said content. At best pirates are responsible for illegal distribution. Still though we are talking about perceived losses. Those that download illegally may claim to download the software because they can not afford it. The fact is there that had it not been available to them the download would not have taken place, but at the same time they never would have purchased the software in the first place. So where is the real loss? Back in the days before P2P and torrents, when people shared by burning disks for friends and passing them out, no one really complained of piracy.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

I work from home

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[rubycodez]

Wow. You don't use paper because you didn't get the Egyptian's permission, you don't use anything with lenses, focusing mirrors or prisms because you don't have Ibn Sahl's nor Ptolemy's permission, you don't use electronic binary computers because you don't have Atanasoff's permission. You are one very, very moral person, never using anyone's work or ideas without their permission or paying them money. You amaze us.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

>>>Nobody should have paid me anything.

That's correct. I'm glad you're finally understanding our viewpoint. Perhaps a LIMITED monopoly of 14 years would be acceptable, so you could useful income from your anti-rust idea, but no more. You no more deserve a multi-decade monopoly than Comcast does over local neighborhoods.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[jedidiah]

> Wow. People can justify anything, I guess.

You mean like your own LYING.

It's so funny how LIARS like to try and take the moral high ground here.

Playing fast and loose with terms is simply dishonest. Anyone claiming moral superiority or trying to smear the ethics of others should really get their own nonsense straight first. Theft and copyright infringement two entirely different things both in the law and traditional common practice. This why it's such a big "problem". It is very unintuitive to quite a lot of people that "sharing" should be illegal.

The idea that copying should be equated with stealing is really quite new.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Barbara, not Barbie]

I want to spread free software and encourage its use as much as anyone else, but doing something I find morally sickening such as reporting software "piracy" is not the right way to go about it. Free software is about your ability to share the software, if you attack people for doing exactly that - sharing the software, you're doing free software no good service.

Reporting license violators (whether they are in violation of proprietary licenses or the GPL or some other license) is not immoral when the end user has alternatives.

Or are you going to argue that people can infringe the GPL or a Creative Commons license because "Free software is about your ability to share the software"?

The various "free" licenses are about much more than just sharing - they may include requiring to acknowledge the original creator, making public any improvements or modifications (either on subsequent distribution, or on end-user demand), and just as importantly, not "filing off the copyrights".

How many people "just can't be bothered" to switch their word processor, their operating system, their image editor, because it's easier to just use a cracked copy? That's not about sharing ... that's about laziness.

The same applies to games, movies, and music - if you like it, but don't like the author's terms, that doesn't give you the right to "share" it. All you've succeeded in doing is decreasing the market for potential competitors who might have offered something with a better price or features. After all, why bother even checking out LibreOffice when you can just pirate MS-Word?

Even Bill Gates acknowledged that software piracy helped get Word into a near-monopoly.

Think of the boost for free/libre software if just everyone who was laid off in the last week reported copyright infringers to the BSA or CAAST.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Artifakt]

So you'd be OK with calling it software raping, and sentencing software rapists to 10 years per count and giving some of them chemical castration so they wouldn't rape software again? If you really don't care what we call it, fine, you don't care how you use words or whether they actually mean anything, so why are you joining a discussion by starting out saying you don't bother to speak truth and no one should bother to read your opinion? .

There are ways to use someone's work that don't need their permission. If all using someone's work without permission is stealing, then even uses such as selling a used copy (right of first sale), format shifting (copying the CD you bought onto your computer), and even time shifting (Tivoing a TV program so you can watch it later)., all become illegal and mortally wrong. It's not "period" and not "the end of story". Using something without permission simply isn't the same thing as theft, until you check to see who owns that something. You right now are breathing atoms that have already passed into my lungs, without my permission.

The people who distribute commercial music, video, and software have repeatedly claimed that what they sold me is a licence for non-commercial use, so they don't have to replace damaged physical media. They've then turned around and added after the fact EULA's, the DMCA, and other methods to take back what they supposedly sold me and flip flopped on what it is I actually own, to where they are, in effect, claiming to have sold me nothing at all. How come people like you never accuse them of theft? How come there's nobody like you saying it's all simple, right or wrong, no middle ground, you take money and don't give what you claim to be selling back, that's theft. Or are clear moral standards only for the consumer, not for businesses?

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod her up!

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[jedidiah]

> Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it,

You mean like how the law specifically spells out? You know all that stuff is supposed to go into the public domain.

You should at least bother to learn the law before trying to lecture anyone about history.

> you've never written a line of code or had an original thought in your life.

Plenty of creative people don't follow the current content cartel mindset. If you were projecting less, you would know this for yourself.

Genuine property rights don't have an expiration date.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

>>>Just because it's not a loss doesn't me you have the right to it.

Likewise neither do you have a right to a monopoly over your book, or Comcast to a monopoly over CATV, or Microsoft a monopoly over PCs, or Standard Oil a monopoly over oil wells, et cetera.

- Nature does not give the right to a monopoly.
Your ideas, by natural right, belong to everyone.
- The protection of your ideas is a limited-time PRIVILEGE granted by society, not a right.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutely right. End of story.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[smitty97]

Those pesky Boy Scouts...

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

Well, in My country the constitution states you are grated a limited monopoly, the limited part being time. The reason being, MOST founders reasoned people who create things might like to get paid for their ideas. Article I, second 8. It's not an amendment, it's not a law... it's the freaking constitution.

So yea, I do use binary computers without paying Atansoff. But you don't use Asus motherboards without paying me for my ideas regarding delamination of multi layered motherboards.

Put up or shut up, I listed my patents below. What have you created.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[zeroshade]

many infringers may not have bought the software if they had to pay, but some sales and some income is undoubtably lost.

You ignore the sales that are gained though.

Consider this: College kid pirates Adobe Photoshop. Learns how to use it, becomes a graphic designer who uses photoshop professionally and purchases a copy for use professionally. That is a sale that was created by piracy. Or maybe the kid who pirated Photoshop ends up talking to friends about it who switch from FooBar image editing software to Photoshop. Then when both become professionals and actually have money, not only might they purchase copies, but they may end up at a company who has to buy licenses for Photoshop (the more likely scenario) and thus they got the job based on having the software available to learn it and generated the sale of licenses.

This is a very real phenomenon that companies like Adobe bank on. Why do you think Adobe doesn't go around locking down their software with ever increasing DRM? Or why Microsoft has only made small gestures at the guise of piracy and spokespeople have even stated that they really mostly ignore it. Because the more people using their software (especially people who would not have purchased it anyways) the more people who end up purchasing their software down the line.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[kilfarsnar]

The radical arguments presented here mean that Facebook has every right to sell personal information of their customers because simply because they have copies of it.

I'm pretty sure that's their business model.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[memyselfandeye]

Well that's exactly what the constitution says I get, a limited monopoly. I never said pirated software is a lost sale, in fact I said the opposite in a manner of speaking. What I really said was just because it's not a lost sale doesn't make it right to take it.

The information I posted can take you to everything I've ever done. You can rip me to shreds, I have opened myself here to anything. Yet nobody else who thinks ideas are worthless has posted one sentence of original thought. I bet all these free the internet, piracy isn't stealing, also think Wikileaks is the second coming. Yet none of you have posted your life. Put up or shut up I say.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[somersault]

That depends - did any other bread exist before that first loaf? Did you replicate it with the owner's consent?

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if by new you mean four centuries, then sure

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[shreddertomas]

Man, you don't make any sense, what kind of drugs are you on? No one can rip you to threads on what you posted.
Regarding anti-rust, it doesn't matter how many copies of anti-rust agent there is in Vietnam. The automative industry in america or europe can still benefit (just as they do) from this idea as much as they want, and pay you for it.
I develop open source software, I make a living, http://ejbca.org/, free to use. The people infringing copyright here are usually large corporations, who are the ones lobbying against software piracy. That's what I call unethical!

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

By refusing to install unlicensed antivirus software (Avira) at a previous job, I was able to convince management to run Ubuntu on several computers.

Some people thought I was going over board for refusing to install "just" the antivirus, but I stood firm, since the license was so cheap, there was no excuse not to buy it.

By the time I left, a third of all the computers at that company were running either Ubuntu on the desktop or CentOS on the servers.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

But you own a car.
You've sped.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[somersault]

Speed limits aren't about morality, they're about placing limits on poor drivers so that when they have an accident, it hopefully won't cause too much death and/or construction. You can still kill people doing 40 in that 55 zone, if you're a fuckwit. Comparing speed limits to copyright is ridiculous..

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Caratted]

Nah, when you get a letter in the mail, stating that each copy of Office that was installed at one of your locations is illegal and potentially worth $50,000 per copy in infringement fees, you start to get a good feel for their business model. Trust me.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Nursie]

Maybe you aren't worth whatever you've been paid, you clearly have some sort of brain problem. You're an A-grade moron.

Just because something isn't stealing doesn't mean that it's right, good for society or anything else.

There is more than one crime on the books, more than one civil offence. Two things do not have to be equivalent to both be bad.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Fujisawa Sensei]

When Jefferson was alive US wealth was in agriculture.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[h4rr4r]

What I do not understand is companies that get these letters after having tried to stay in compliance and then go on using these products. If I owned a business and got such a letter you can guarantee we would never use such products again.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[camperslo]

If I were the Boys Scouts of America, I'd be upset to have such a group using my alphabet soup letters.

I think with the success that Apple has had first with bringing paid digital music delivery, and more recently with free and mostly low-cost apps, they've shown that many many people will pay when the terms are reasonable. When the costs of making something are relatively fixed, normal competitiveness should drive end-user costs down as something gets more and more popular. But due to the uniqueness of a song, and to some extent software patents in apps, artificial scarcity throws a wrench into the supposedly free market competition.

There should be more freedom for developers to make competing better versions of apps. They can in the EU, why not the US? And for apps made for a smaller high-end market, perhaps tiered pricing with minor functional differences and differing levels of support could all those apps to reach all at a cost that is reasonable. Certainly app stores should be fully open to (free as in beer, and rights) FOSS projects. That improves competition, and also gives those who can't afford some of the commercial apps a way to functionally stay clear of pirating commercial apps. I think the free with donations encouraged, true shareware model should be encouraged too. And I don't mean nagware or keyware/demoware which is really DRM'd commercial crippleware until you pay. Apple should do more to encourage you people to learn to create software and other things. It's not all about content. Our digital devices should just be a modern replacement for those who one sat around watching television. Bring back an included development environment for the masses and provide a logical pathway to more advanced projects. Many machines once came with BASIC, and Macintoshes with Hypercard. If Hypercard supported HTML5, what could people do with that?

The piracy figures are pretty misleading in dollars if the use doesn't increase costs, and the users would buy at current prices even if piracy were impossible. They're not real losses. Some of what goes on amounts to viral marketing, some is essentially educational and leading to future paying customers. The heavy-handed approach isn't productive.

Some of the larger operations have gone too far to lock in people, trap them into numerous upgrades, force them to pay again when they get new machines....
Something is wrong when Americas' 400 richesst people have more wealth than the poorest 150 million people. No wonder consumer spending has had excessive use of credit and is choking. It's like the richest have taken away wealth people done even have yet, making some feel like slaves.

Some may recall that in schools years ago, before home computers, there was talk of the future. Smog would be gone (great progess has been made), there'd be push button phones, picture phones, flat screen televisions on the wall (took about 30 years longer than expected...), and the quality of life would be better because of technology. The high efficiency would allow people to live better and enjoy more while the wage earner only needed to work 3 or 4 days a week, and with shorter hours. But somehow, greed and corruption sucked the wealth of increased productivity away from the masses. The divide between the rich and poor gets wider and wider.
The tales of corruption, disparity between rich and poor, and dumbed down happy happy fluff on state run television in Egypt seemed uncomfortably too familiar. Democracy is a wonderful alternative, if it doesn't get rigged to be bought.

Is piracy really just low-end theivery or is it a sign of deeper social problems?

Help repair democracy, demand and end to paid political radio and tv ads. They'll never cut their own campaign contributions, so let's cut how they can spend them. Demcocracy needs open competitive responsive media that educates, enlightens and promotes involvement and discussion.

We've got an FCC commissioner going to work for Comcast/NBC/GE.

How ironic

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Weeeell, since the support of MS's new proprietary OOXML formats (yes, I'm aware they bought a fancy sticker saying "ISO Standard", doesn't make them any less crappy) has stabilized in OpenOffice, we have bought *zero* new copies of MSOffice, having no use for same and using OOo instead. Since I see many companies around here doing the same, I suppose the drop in sales is quite marked - and I'd bet that for MS "piracy == lost sales, therefore also lost sales == piracy: damn competition is stealing our customers", never mind the sales lost to alternatives.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we have an equivalent to Godwin's Law so that, as soon as someone says "end of story", they automatically lose the argument?

Yes. It's call Argument by assertion.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Leekle2ManE]

If it were possible for me to completely copy the entire recipe of that loaf of bread, replicate it and then give away the bread with minimal effort and at absolutely no cost to me thus putting the bakery that originally made the bread out of business, then yes, I would consider it wrong.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[camperslo]

Opps a couple of "should"s when I meant shouldn't etc. Said income, meant profit... Hopefully one can read past the typos and see the intended meaning.

Ranting is hard work, and I skipped outsourcing....

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[SaroDarksbane]

I don't care what you call it, it is morally wrong and it is illegal.

Illegal, yes. Morally wrong, though? I didn't realize I'd be sent straight to hell for my use of blockquotes . . .

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[SaroDarksbane]

Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code

So if I, as a software engineer, tell you that so-called "intellectual property" laws should be abolished, what would that do to your world-view?

Don't try to speak for everyone unless you know everyone.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you get MichaelKristopeit's permission to copy his personality?

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Caratted]

There are plenty of folks who do not belong in IT, doing IT work - definitely including the software asset management portion, which folks who do belong in IT loathe and, depending on their environment, have no problems delegating to the accounting office. To round this out and get back on track, the BSA does operate on very vague terminology and are, primarily, a sales team built by the largest software manufacturers in the world. They do nothing but inquire and threaten, then settle. Oh, and did you know, you can get a nary 20% of what [they say] the settlement is, so long as you are the one doing the tip-off. The business model is clear as day, and it is definitively through arbitrary paperwork - never actual legal recourse.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[jimicus]

Many businesses have a fairly similar view - there's a damn good reason that businesses don't go around suing their business customers all the time. By the time you get to that point, any relationship that might have existed between two businesses is more-or-less dead.

The reason the BSA is strong is that a number of pieces of software have become effective monopolies in their niche. Office and Photoshop are the obvious examples, but I'm sure there are many others. They can get away with suing customers quite easily because the customer feels they're stuck - much as they'd love to say "Fine. Here's your settlement, but we're never using any of your products again", they can't. Even today, it's a rare business owner that will follow Ernie Ball's example (which has been trotted out on /. more times than I care to remember) and refuse to run anything which Microsoft have touched, regardless of how much work that will involve.

The easiest way to gut the BSA would be for there to be some real competition in the market. They'd be a lot more hesitant about threatening legal proceedings against companies that have paid for some but not all of their software if the general feeling amongst businesses were "If (Microsoft|Adobe|Software Vendor) want to take that attitude, fine, but they won't keep us as customers".

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Austerity Empowers]

Or they'd have to stop using overseas sweatshops to avoid licensing fees (and increased labor fees) to dodge license costs.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[BuckaBooBob]

A Group like the EFF(not the EFF itself) should be posting reports that show that Overpriced Software and Software Patents are destroying the economy and use actual real credible numbers rather than the fictional numbers the the BSA comes out with.

 

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[BuckaBooBob]

You are sadly mistaken.... FULL cooperation with the BSA would only end up lining the pockets of Exec's in massive companies... It wouldn't create any new jobs... Just more revenue from the same amount of work done.. If anything we would see less innovation as there would be even less incentive for companies to produce stable feature rich software to win your hard earned money... Would is likely is that even more money would be dumped into software patents to prevent competition and they would start to work on shortening Product life so that they would have everyone buying ever single new release they put out..

   

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[spire3661]

I would consider that capitalism.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[spire3661]

We use Newton's work every day, should we be paying his estate in perpetuity? All these arguments ignore the fact that the LAW is HORRIBLY broken. Using someone's IP without permission might be wrong but so is the crazy licensing agreements we allow companies to get away with. There is more then enough wrong to go around to both sides.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[spire3661]

Patents are not proof of creation, they are proof of government granted monopoly, nothing more. Logic fail.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[nabsltd]

Well, in My country the constitution states you are grated a limited monopoly, the limited part being time.

What is this "time limit" you speak of? Between copyright, trademark, and patents, it's fairly easy to keep the monopoly on a particular creative work for nearly 200 years.

The reason being, MOST founders reasoned people who create things might like to get paid for their ideas.

Yet another person who has no clue about why there are supposed to be limits on the length of copyright, patents, etc. It's not so that the creators can make money, it's so that they must release the creative content to the public within a reasonable time. In the early 1700's, England had essentially infinite duration copyright, and the men who wrote the US Constitution did not like that. What happens during the limited time of monopoly was really no concern of theirs...they didn't care if the people got paid for their ideas, as long as the idea was eventually released to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[rubycodez]

what you or I have created is not relevant to discussion of morals, though as engineering physicist and more recently software developer, I have made many things in my lifetime that are used by at least tens of millions of people. It is fine to have things for sale and to have royalties, but the core issue in this context is that poor people who could never afford a $250 OS o $1400 office suite can magically replicate something which does not take anything away from anyone, the software companies still make their billions

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[spire3661]

And extended copyright costs EVERYONE money. It cuts both ways. Until we get sanity in copyright and IP law you are never going to have the moral high ground. You may have the legal high ground but thats not the same thing at all.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cheekyjohnson]

What exactly is "morally wrong"? Your opinion on the matter is not an absolute fact, and people do have different interpretations of the words "right" and "wrong." It's entirely subjective, as far as we know.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[SuricouRaven]

This is why MS (and others, but mostly MS) largely tolerate piracy in developing countries, where very few those able to afford a computer could afford even the student licences. Microsoft would rather have those people using pirate windows than switch to linux, on the grounds that a pirate can be a potential paying customer in future when they have the money while a linux-user is a much tougher convert. That, and network effects: All those pirates emailing Office documents around and demanding Windows software and games help to make sure that linux remains relatively unsupported.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Dunbal]

Would you consider it wrong to replicate a loaf of bread?

I am sure he would if (and only if) he owned the bakery.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it could be argued that FULL cooperation with the BSA would generate the most local jobs, as companies would then be forced to shift to open source to avoid the expense and hassle of complying with proprietary licensing.

Good luck with that.

The problem with any idea that requires every single person to be compliant is that it will never work, regardless of what we are talking about.

Reporting local piracy will only reroute pirates. The past -- dating back several centuries to the days of rogue printing presses -- bears this out.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[poetmatt]

full cooperation with the BSA would mean that open source is piracy. Since they've tried to claim that shit before, mostly because anything that is competition to them is worded as illegal or bad.

So no, that wouldn't work.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL license violations and the copyright violations that BSA go after are certainly not the same category. GPL violations happen when someone when someone refuses to share even though the license requires him to. BSA goes after people who share or use the product of sharing. Those are the opposite things.

Both GPL and Creative Commons were created with the idea that the copyright law is unjust, and people should be granted more freedoms, but both the FSF and Creative Commons knew that changing the law was not an option at the time, so they created a practical approach through licensing. Both the FSF and Creative Commons seem to agree that people sharing materials for non-commercial purposes shouldn't be a target for the law, and the FSF even seem to think that the same is true for commercial sharing, and that's regardless of the license, and both are for reduction of the length of copyright. Therefore, the aim of the GPL and the Creative Commons is to make those things possible for a certain subset of software and art.

Reporting copyright violations, especially those that BSA deals with, goes against the ideas which created the FSF, GNU and the GPL, and might probably go against some of the ideas that are in the foundation of CC. In short, it goes against the idea that people should be allowed to share.

Oh, and yes, I wouldn't report GPL violations, I'd first talk with the person committing it. Even then, although they do against the principle of sharing, I'd first weigh the situation and judge whether the violation is bad or not, and then if it is, I would report it. I might skip talking with the person themselves, because that's what gpl-violations.org do, unlike BSA which are more into witch hunts.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Barbara, not Barbie]

full cooperation with the BSA would mean that open source is piracy. Since they've tried to claim that shit before, mostly because anything that is competition to them is worded as illegal or bad.

No, it wouldn't. Stop being such a sheeple :-)

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[Barbara, not Barbie]

Both GPL and Creative Commons were created with the idea that the copyright law is unjust

Fact: Both the GPL and Creative Commons were created to leverage copyright law, and are dependent on copyright to give authors some control over their works for a certain time, same as any other copyright license.

Just because the "currency" in some cases is public attribution doesn't mean that it's entirely "free" - money isn't everything, and "free" in "free software" is about much more than money.

Both the FSF and Creative Commons seem to agree that people sharing materials for non-commercial purposes shouldn't be a target for the law

Fact: Whether it's commercial or not doesn't enter into it. You can't take a CC or GPL licensed work, file off the copyrights, and claim YOU wrote it, and distribute it as your work, even if such distribution is free. You can't even do that with stuff under the BSD licenses.

Reporting copyright violations, especially those that BSA deals with, goes against the ideas which created the FSF, GNU and the GPL

Fact: The FSF has no problem with people reporting copyright violators of GNU/GPL software. Are you suggesting they would be hypocrites to recommend people look the other way when it comes to others' rights?

Report stuff to the BSA - it's one way to show that non-free software has a high cost. Using their own lobbying group against them is just good judo.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[cpu6502]

>>>you've never written a line of code

I write code (VHDL and verilog) for a living. And no I don't give a rat's ass if someone downloads it off piratebay.org, because I know that ~99% of customers buy it legally and income from those people FAR offset any losses from the downloaders.

Furthermore if the time came when I couldn't make money from coding, then I'd just have to find a new career. Wouldn't I? Like what happened with horsewhip and wagon wheel artisans. Times change - accept that rather than try to freeze history and prevent the forward march of progress.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[hitmark]

Indeed. I think there is a actual confession by a MS rep saying that they would rather see someone use a unlicensed copy of Windows and Office then switch to Linux or similar.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[rubycodez]

in reality, patents don't even guarantee that. Naive people imagine that a patent will give them exclusive ability to make money from something, or to control anyone who tries to make a certain thing, or to ensure a portion of revenue will go to them. A particular patent may not do any of those things.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[bigbird]

The marginal cost of copies after the first is precisely zero for software.

And the first copy sold doesn't pay for the cost of development - for the current version or any future versions.

You assume that, in the absence of piracy, that some of those people would have purchased, but there's no basis for the assumption beyond the notion that somebody likely would have paid. Maybe somebody would or maybe somebody wouldn't have, but it's completely speculative as we don't know what would have happened.

So because it is inevitably speculative, you think "oh well, piracy is ok because we can't *prove* income was definitely lost"? It's a reasonable assumption that *some* income is lost, even if it is speculative.

And ultimately, another key issue is whether it is right or wrong to appropriate someone's efforts against their wishes.

Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs

[SuricouRaven]

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." - Bill Gates Himself. Given that this must have been back when Gates was still running Microsoft, the quote must be more than a few years old.

$58.8 billion?

[Legion303]

Man, I am WAY behind. Everyone needs to pitch in and do their part.

Re:$58.8 billion?

[duguk]

Man, I am WAY behind. Everyone needs to pitch in and do their part.

I've paid my $8.77 - have you?

Re:$58.8 billion?

[batquux]

$58.8 billion means that only one person downloaded a pirated copy of anything in 2010.

Re:$58.8 billion?

[hedwards]

The GP is right, and for my part I haven't pirated enough software either. We all need to do our part. I for one do not want to be cowed by those thuggish oafs.

Tell a lie often enough...

[nurb432]

...and it becomes truth, especially when you use the media to squelch the real truth.

Excellent plan!

[metacell]

If everyone starts downloading ten times as much software as they can use, we'll have bankrupted the entire industry in a year!

Broken Window Fallacy

[rlp122]

Good to see the old Broken Window Fallacy is still alive and well.

Re:Broken Window Fallacy

[cpu6502]

>>>Broken Window Fallacy

Cash for Clunkers comes to mind.

As another poster remarks, imagine if the Boy was PAID by the glazier to go-round breaking perfectly functional windows? The glazier would be a vandalist and thief.

That is, in essence, what Congress is guilty of doing. I watched on my evening news as perfectly-good, rust-free, and less than 10 year old cars were crushed. For what purpose? To make GM and the bankers slightly richer.

Re:Broken Window Fallacy

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Too true. When cash for clunkers was going on I saw a picture of a newer Jeep (I think it was a Grand Cherokee) that was going off to the crusher. My thought was that thing was nicer than my hunting SUV (an 88' Ford Bronco II) and that it was such a waste. The other thing that I didn't like was that they destroyed the engines. These vehicles couldn't even go off to the junk yard and be salvaged for spare parts which would have been the most responsible thing to do, instead they were crushed and sent to a smelter.

Re:Broken Window Fallacy

[toriver]

It's closer to a counter-economy-101 phrase like "demand at $500 is the same as demand at $0".

Re:Broken Window Fallacy

[Attila Dimedici]

I have a friend who works in the Used Car business. He has commented that since Cash for Clunkers, cars that used to be around $1,000 to $2,000 have shot up to over $5,000. This has resulted in cars that used to be around $5,000 to go up in price. Basically, Cash for Clunkers has been a success. It has made it so that the poorest in America cannot afford a car and are now reliant on public transportation.

Re:Broken Window Fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

And to reduce emissions and improve fuel economy. Believe it or not, petroleum is a finite resource.

Re:Broken Window Fallacy

[uninformedLuddite]

Destroying the engines and the spares was just another way of making sure your 88 bronco will have to be retired and replaced sooner. I am not in the US but I was horrified. They would have destroyed my car and I get 100km/6l and that's just horrific behaviour

FACTS

[chronoss2010]

if i have 1000$ and dont spend it on holly fuck that money dont disappear to no one.....it goes to johnny the shoe maker, and kraft dinner makers of fine cheap food. ITS all a tax on life these days, so get it how ya can fuck em all. THEY wold screw there own mothers in a heart beat for a buck and often do. SO you might as well join the darkside and get the fuck to it.

Re:FACTS

[ZombieBraintrust]

That $1000 is a stand in for work. In an economy full of theft you have high unemployment. Or high underemployment. Instead of $1000 you earned writing software for your local market you have $5 selling imported shoes.

Quit making excuses

[smooth wombat]

resort to piracy is because they can't afford Western-style pricing.

So that legitimizes taking someone else's work and not compensating them for it, right? Because the world runs on dreams and kindness and everything should just be given away.

Guess what, someone, usually dozens or hundreds of people, worked to produce the software and they want to be paid for their work. Just because you don't think the price is justified doesn't entitle you to take their work and not compensate them.

And yes, I'm using the word entitled because that is the overwhelming opinion on this site and others that people are somehow entitled to take something which isn't theirs and not have to pay a dime for it.

Maybe you think it's funny or sticking it to the man, but you wouldn't be laughing if it was your stuff being taken and you didn't get paid for it.

And don't bother bringing up how software isn't "real" goods or services. That the cost to produce it is negligible. There are still ongoing costs associated with producing and distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?

While the BSA numbers are certainly overstated, the fact remains people are stealing someone else's work and trying to justify that theft by claiming, "But they live in a poor country and can't afford it so it's ok to steal" is bullshit.

You want to code and give your stuff away, that's fine. It's your stuff. Don't try claiming what you think should be done with your stuff applies to someone else's stuff.

Re:Quit making excuses

[mikael_j]

[...]distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?

Uh, if people pirate software wouldn't that mean that they're not straining the producer's servers?

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

You want to code and give your stuff away, that's fine. It's your stuff. Don't try claiming what you think should be done with your stuff applies to someone else's stuff.

The Encylopaedia Nobullshitica defines "Stuff" as "that which has mass and takes up space". And therein lies the problem with your whole blathering bullshit rant. No matter how you slice it, people who can't afford your software not paying for your software is not a lost sale, and that is the statement you are arguing against, as the summary does not make any statements about whether these people are entitled to this software or not.

Come down off your fucking soapbox. We need the space to flame the next fool slashbot.

Re:Quit making excuses

[oh_my_080980980]

Hey douche bag, RTFA:

"The very reason that people pirate software in developing countries - the main focus of the BSA report - is that they cannot afford Western-level prices. So there is no way that pirated software could ever be converted to sales at those prices - it is economically impossible. Using it as a measure is pure fantasy.

A more sophisticated study would attempt to establish at what price people would actually choose to buy from dealers rather than other sources: then that could be used to calculate a realistic estimate of how much revenue is lost in developing countries."

That's the point moron: Piracy exists because products have been priced out of the market. The market has spoken and it has decided to not pay high prices.

Ass-hole.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you're trying to apply the concept of an idealistic world to the world we live in. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

Yes, in an ideal world everyone gets along and the developers always get compensated. But in reality, that's not possible. What is $10 for us may be a week's salary in a lot of places. It has been shown that the main cause of piracy is the failure of the copyright holder to licence their works at a price reasonable to the target market. You know what - I bet you that a lot of those people who pirate stuff and actually use it (as opposed to pirate stuff and simply hoard it) would actually consider buying the product if they could afford it.

The real problem here is the inability for copyright holders to understand that other people aren't as rich as they are. The other problem is that they're being greedy and trying to price gouge consumers. Basically, it boils down to this: if they really want to try and combat piracy, spending $x million on litigation and lobbying won't help them in the long run. They need to take a step back and look at their pricing model and bring it in line with what is considered reasonable. Piracy is the consumer's way of saying their prices aren't reasonable. As for the people that would pirate anyway and would never buy the product - there's no lost sale there, so no lost revenue as compared to if the software was never pirated.

And no, of course I don't condone piracy. I just think that people need to look at the big picture and realise what's really going on here before they start judging others.

Re:Quit making excuses

[metacell]

And don't bother bringing up how software isn't "real" goods or services. That the cost to produce it is negligible. There are still ongoing costs associated with producing and distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?

That's why it's better to release your software on BitTorrent. The customer takes care of the distribution themselves.

For products which are funded by advertising, like TV shows, this makes even more sense. The networks are already giving away TV shows for free over the airwaves; releasing them on BitTorrent is just more efficient.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.

-- Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Van Gogh's famous prediction was correct, if somewhat arrogant, since his pictures became extremely valuable after his death.

But something has changed, and now we are told that the pictures are in fact worth much less than the cost of the materials. They are, after all, just information, and according to piracy advocates, the cost of producing the information is limited to the cost of copying it. Never mind the cost of R&D, never mind the time spent getting the artwork just right.. it's not "stuff", it's just information, and if you can copy it in a second, then that's all it's worth.

Seems like something of a backward step to me. And what's more, we all know it. We know that piracy is wrong. There is outcry at every GPL violation because someone else's work has been appropriated, and they get nothing for all the time they put into making it. If we were consistent, we'd be equally angry at every commercial licence violation, instead of making excuses.

Re:Quit making excuses

[stanlyb]

Patents, monopoly, copyright, IP, all these things are made to protect the individuals, not the society. The society does not needs copyrights to function. But, in order for the individuals to have the incentive to produce something original, and to retrieve the money that they invested in it, the society invented a time limited ban of "copyright" (or copy-ban?). With just a few words, the copyright thing is just a compromise between the society and the individuals. Noting more. There is no stealing, theft, or whatever nasty words you have in your mind. And when one of the party abuses this contract, then guess what happens?

Re:Quit making excuses

[VortexCortex]

I think that if you want to charge for information that is fine. But you have no right to restrict my use of the information after the sale, to do so infringes my 1st amendment constitutional rights which state that congress shall make no law against my freedom of speech.

The fallacy of the "information owner" idea is that you have actually created something unique, and of your own mind. Without society, your mind would not exist. The form and structure of the information, the words, concepts, frameworks, languages that all of our information, written or electronic, that exists in our culture helped to shape your very mind, and the insubstantial collection and arrangement of such cultural items should not be allowed to be owned by anyone (attributed, perhaps, but not owned).

For example, I created a spoken & written language based on a 16 character alphabet such that words and phases could be easily interpreted by a machine as well as a human, in fact, The concepts of spacial dimensions (0 - 3), time, energy transfer, motion are the building blocks of the language such that even an Alien could understand and use the language with a bit of study.

Everything in that language I invented myself, and as such the language and books produced in the language have no worth outside of the culture that understands and uses those works... (Note: I was still not able to escape the influence of own culture -- I had to borrow the concept of the written word, and simple physics, and even puns!).

The culture gives your informational work merit, we prosper as a species BECAUSE WE CAN EXCHANGE IDEAS. It is evil to contribute a very small amount of work in relation to the culture's total information collection, and then discriminate against who can use the information afterwards.

You are free to share or not share your contributions with whomever you please and to require an exchange of some sort prior to sharing, but you do not have the moral right to restrict what they do with the information you share. Currently you have the legal right to seek monetary penalties for those who do not respect your restrictive wishes, this was not always the case. In fact, I posit that were this the case we would still be living in the Dark Ages at best, but most probably the Stone Age -- surely not the Information Age.

Copyright law was designed to benefit the society as a whole. The US Constitution states the purpose of copyright is to “promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts.” Our highest court (The Supreme Court) has upheld this constitutional premise: “The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.”

When the general public is harmed by copyright law, infringing upon the society's 1st amendment rights, and basic human drive to share information (which allowed the very creation of the works, society and laws) it no longer serves its purpose, and it is your duty as a thinking social being to reject the unjust uses of such a law.

Re:Quit making excuses

[cHALiTO]

You know, there are a lot of other types of "worth", not just monetary.
A pacemaker literally saves someone's life. Does that mean the price should be everything the patient has and/or can manage to cough up?

Just because someone gets a copy of something without paying the official price for it doesn't mean it's devoid of any kind of value.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Neil Boekend]

For products which are funded by advertising, like TV shows, this makes even more sense. The networks are already giving away TV shows for free over the airwaves; releasing them on BitTorrent is just more efficient.

I don't understand: if the product is funded by advertising, how are the networks going to get paid if they release it on BitTorrent?

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

What you're getting at is exactly what bothers me. The reasoning of lots of people seems to be "I want something; therefore I am entitled to it." It's a child's argument.

What is the difference between the idea of wanting to breathe and taking a breath, and wanting to listen to a song and downloading the mp3?

Re:Quit making excuses

[Goboxer]

I can't afford a house, because western style pricing has moved it outside of my realm of buying power. Should I go ahead and steal it, then have other people explain how the housing industry should drop their prices because I couldn't afford to buy it?

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, I'm using the word entitled because that is the overwhelming opinion on this site and others that people are somehow entitled to take something which isn't theirs and not have to pay a dime for it.

Maybe you think it's funny or sticking it to the man, but you wouldn't be laughing if it was your stuff being taken and you didn't get paid for it.

Copying is not 'taking', it's just copying. So nobody is 'taking' anything without paying, or have you just completely ignored that oft-espoused truism?
Also, people have 'taken' (or rather, COPIED) my stuff in the past without me being paid for it, but am I bothered? No, because I'm not greedy in corporatist financial terms - I don't feel that sense of entitlement that so many 'creators' do, that they should be paid for their work no matter what or how good it is. I see the bigger picture, that I have more potential supporters for my future work and will ultimately benefit from this free distribution, publicity and recommendation between the individuals involved. So stop being an apologist for the broken business models of yesteryear and get with the 21st century!

Re:Quit making excuses

[tompaulco]

RTFA yourself. The article goes on to say that "money not paid for software licences does not disappear, but is just spent elsewhere in the local economy." Well, gee, within one paragraph, we go from "they can't afford it" to the money (that they don't have supposedly) to buy the software gets spent elsewhere in the economy.
This article is just more entitlement bullcrap. If you can't afford it, you don't punish the company by taking it anyway, you punish them by not buying it at all. If you take it illegally, you reinforce the idea that their software is worth something, probably even worth a lot because people who can't afford it will resort to illegal means just to get it.

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

What you say is all true. But the fact remains that people are not entitled to software. Copyright holders have the right to charge exorbitant rates to everyone (and suffer the consequent low sales); copyright holders have the right to charge low rates; and copyright holders have the right to charge exorbitant rates to those who can pay for them and low rates to those who can't. But it is the choice of the copyright holder. Just because something would be useful to you doesn't mean that you can have it at the price you're able to pay.

What you say is all true today but it wasn't always so and what kept a volume of books from being produced before copyright wasn't the lack of copyright but the lack of printing presses and literacy. Which I gather is a sort of chicken/egg/roosterr thing that is probably among the most studied of history, so I won't try to make insightful commentary about it in particular... but the point is that copyright is for the purpose of limiting use of works. We've seen time and again that all art is derivative, so the purpose of copyright is to retard progress in order to secure profit. There is a secondary purpose in systems in which copyright registration requires submission of a copy of the work for archiving, but otherwise, it's about creating scarcity.

Everything you say is true in theory only because the people have agreed that it should be true. However, it is looking more and more like the people no longer agree that it should be the case. In a couple of generations you may see it flip over. In the meantime anyone who is against copyright should refuse to purchase media which uses it for its stated purpose, and consume copyleft media instead. Vote with your wallet most especially.

We could argue all day over whether it is moral to copy music without paying for it. I might for example argue that I ought to be able to freely legally download any music anyone has spent any money on injecting into my consciousness against my will. Ultimately, this is something we will have to decide together, and we are deciding it. What's wrong with deciding that it's okay to copy music?

Re:Quit making excuses

[cpu6502]

>>>Guess what, someone, usually dozens or hundreds of people, worked to produce the software and they want to be paid for their work

They have already been paid
(hourly or weekly wages).
So stop bitching.

>>>Maybe you think it's funny or sticking it to the man, but you wouldn't be laughing if it was your stuff being taken and you didn't get paid for it.

Wouldn't bother me.
I would share the same opinion as the Author of the "Walking Dead" comic book: The amount of money I earn, even minus the losses from piracy, is still a hell of a lot more than if I hid the comic book in my closet and never shared it.

>>>Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?

Some of them are running on cow farts. (Yes I'm serious.) Anyway you don't have a natural right to a monopoly. You don't have a natural right to have your ideas protected, anymore than Comcast has a right to a monopoly on CATV, or Ford a monopoly on cars, or Apple a monopoly on MP3 players. Such a "right" does not exist.

Your monopoly is a PRIVILEGE granted by society, and the privilege can be revoked at any time the People decide it is no longer needed. Stick that in your flame and smoke it.

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

There's nothing wrong with "the people"â"in the sense of "society"â"deciding it's okay to copy music, software, or other digitally-stored works. The problem is when persons unilaterally decide that it's okay.

The problem with that idea is that "the people" making a decision is the same as a whole bunch of people unilaterally making the decision. Indeed, a majority of them. Because we are not a hive; we are individuals; people keep on thinking and talking and making more people and more germane to this conversation making decisions even when you are not looking at them.

The people cannot decide anything without individuals deciding that thing. You would have stasis.

Re:Quit making excuses

[cpu6502]

>>>Never mind the cost of R&D, never mind the time spent getting the artwork just right.. it's not "stuff", it's just information, and if you can copy it in a second, then that's all it's worth.

On Ebay I recently complained about a customer that bought a brand-new videogame, swiped it with a beat-up scratched disc, and then returned it. Ebay responded "That's just the cost of business. We try to protect our sellers but in this case we have to follow the law which sides with the buyer." I'm still angry about it but overall I made a lot more money (~$5000) than I lost (~$30).

Same applies to piracy. It is simply the cost of business, and if you feel you cannot deal with those ~1% of losses, then maybe you should not be a businessman.

Oh, and you don't have a right to a monopoly. You don't have a right to eternal protection of your book, song, or program. In nature no such protection exists, therefore no such right exists. You have a LIMITED PRIVILEGE to a monopoly, in the same way Comcast was granted a limited privilege in my neighborhood to supply television. The privilege can and will be revoked whenever We the People decide it no longer benefits us.

Que?

Re:Quit making excuses

[zeroshade]

There is outcry at every GPL violation because someone else's work has been appropriated, and they get nothing for all the time they put into making it.

Someone doesn't understand the GPL. You can't violate it simply by appropriating something and not paying the author. Whether or not payment is accepted is not part of the GPL you can or you can't. A violation of the GPL has nothing to do with compensating the person who developed it, it's about keeping the work open. So yea, let's be angry about the license violation involving keeping software open and let's not care about the license violation that deprives the public domain via tremendously long copyright lengths.

Re:Quit making excuses

[smooth wombat]

Your monopoly is a PRIVILEGE granted by society, and the privilege can be revoked at any time the People decide it is no longer needed.

Bullshit. It is not a privilege, it's a right. It's called commerce and without commerce society ceases to exist.

If everyone thought they were entitled to take/use/whatever the product that someone else took the time and money to produce, society would very quickly collapse. And no, bartering would not replace capitalism because there would never be enough products produced to compensate people at what they consider a fair value.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

The story isn't saying that piracy is fine and no attempt should be made to combat it. But if you're trying to figure out how big of a problem it is, you're not helping anyone if you start quoting in accurate numbers.

There's a lot of crime in this neighborhood, how much is that costing business? Oh, $100 billion. Ok, the roads are bad too, how much does that cost us? $100 billion. Drug problems.. $100 billion! We can't address problems and determine our priorities if people are wildly overestimating these things. If piracy were only causing business $100/year in losses, I don't care how WRONG it is, it's just not worth spending time or money fixing the problem.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

In another reply to my post, someone else says that

You know, there are a lot of other types of "worth", not just monetary.

They're right... but I never said otherwise. What I am talking about is licence violations in general, not just those involving money.

If the source code licence says you have to pay Microsoft $1 for every copy you sell, and then you don't bother, then that's a licence violation.

If the source code licence says that your code has to be released under the GPL, and then you just sell binaries and don't give anyone the source, then that's also a licence violation.

So you see, these are both actually the same situation, in that part of the licence has simply been ignored. I don't see what "tremendously long copyright lengths" have to do with anything here.

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

Bullshit. It is not a privilege, it's a right. It's called commerce and without commerce society ceases to exist.

Uh wait what? Without creating artificial scarcity of ideas there would be no commerce and without commerce there would be no society? Your entire comment is based on and indeed made up of logical fallacies.

If everyone thought they were entitled to take/use/whatever the product that someone else took the time and money to produce, society would very quickly collapse. And no, bartering would not replace capitalism because there would never be enough products produced to compensate people at what they consider a fair value.

Again with the logical failure. If everyone just took there would be no bartering because barter is exchange, not just taking. However, copyright law does not induce creation, it prohibits it.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

"~1% of losses," you say? Doesn't this rather depend on the number of people who are pirating?

I notice that your Ebay business depends on most of your customers being honest. If they all behaved like the bad customer you mentioned, then you wouldn't have made $5000. It would be a big problem for you if all your customers suddenly believed that honesty wasn't important.

If piracy really is at "~1%", then this is only because ~99% of customers are still basically honest.

Re:Quit making excuses

[locofungus]

I don't understand the point you are trying to make.

I can buy a copy of van Gogh sunflowers for 3.99 (GBP)

The "Essential extras" frame comes in at 19.99

I suspect, in real terms, the frame plus poster costs less than the paint that van Gogh used.

You could value a copy of sunflowers at 50M but then nobody would buy it.

OTOH, I went to see the Zubaran paintings at Bishop Auckland a week or so ago. The thirteenth picture of the set is, in fact, a copy but it cost Bishop Trevor 21GBP - one of the most expensive to acquire because the owner of the original would not sell. The collection is described as "priceless". I've no idea what the value of the copy alone would be but it's certainly not going to be 3.99.

I've no idea what it would cost to have a modern painted copy of the sunflowers made but I would imagine prices ranging from 10K upwards depending on the skill and reputation of the person doing the copy.

(Quick google gives: http://globalwholesaleart.com/Van-Gogh-Paintings-ar-57.html?gclid=CL7R-Y7S4qgCFcbc4AodtllDEg so it's actually a lot cheaper than I'd expected)

But this all shows that, in out of copyright art, the cost of a copy is proportional to the cost of producing that copy. Art is unusual in that there are people who are prepared to pay a huge premium to own the original.

Tim.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Talderas]

The people can revoke that when they repeal the laws that grant it. I still see the laws on the books so it appears the it hasn't been repealed.

Just because you unilaterally decide to revoke that monopoly does not mean that society has decided to do so.

Re:Quit making excuses

[zeroshade]

Easy. You're looking at the license violations as the same situation because they are both license violations. Claiming that the reasoning shouldn't matter because they are both license violations. Fair enough. That's your opinion. However, my point was that the reasoning matters. People aren't angry about a violation of the GPL simply because it's a license violation, they are angry because they believe it is wrong for software released to the community for free use of code etc, to be locked up afterwards into a proprietary state.

In the case of copyright infringement such as "piracy" people violate the license for all kinds of reasons. But I doubt you'll find someone who would be legitimately angry about a violation to the GPL, who pirates just for the hell of it or just to get stuff for free. It's not the same situation when you take rationale into account. "Try before you buy", "civil disobedience", etc. There's no cognitive dissonance and no hypocrisy here. Just a desire for what a merging of what is "right" and what is "legal". You want to look at it in black in white, that they are both simply violations of a license, then fine. Go ahead. But it's not an argument that's going to have any weight nor be helpful to a meaningful discussion.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

The point is that the value of information is not the same as the cost of copying it.

That's something that Van Gogh understood, but piracy advocates choose not to. I thought the quotation illustrated this quite nicely, since it is all about the value of intellectual property. The paint and canvas only became valuable when Van Gogh added his IP. And yet, according to piracy advocates, that IP is just as worthless as any other IP, whether it's run out of copyright (as it now has) or whether it was painted yesterday.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

I completely disagree. I think this is a matter of principle, and you're making an arbitrary distinction between two situations which are very similar, in which the rights of the author and publisher are not being respected.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Kielistic]

How many times do people have to explain why stealing property is not the same as pirating software? We get it. You think that pirating software is wrong. Blatant logical fallacies will never prove your point. Pirating a copy of autoCAD will never stop anyone else from buying autoCAD. Stealing that house on the corner does stop someone from buying it.

But to turn your own example against you if a foreign housing market cannot afford US prices then it most certainly will not insist on charging US prices.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Hatta]

But something has changed, and now we are told that the pictures are in fact worth much less than the cost of the materials. They are, after all, just information, and according to piracy advocates, the cost of producing the information is limited to the cost of copying it. Never mind the cost of R&D, never mind the time spent getting the artwork just right.. it's not "stuff", it's just information, and if you can copy it in a second, then that's all it's worth.

You are (deliberately?) misrepresenting the argument. Nobody claims that the cost of the information is limited to the cost of copying it. We claim that the cost of copies of the information is limited to the cost of producing the copies. This is simple economics, zero marginal cost leads to zero marginal price.

Everyone knows and appreciates the fact that a lot more goes into creating an original work than into making copies. Financing creativity by charging for mechanical operations is a business model whose time has passed. People still value creativity, and will pay for it. People don't value copies.

Re:Quit making excuses

[nabsltd]

But something has changed, and now we are told that the pictures are in fact worth much less than the cost of the materials. They are, after all, just information, and according to piracy advocates, the cost of producing the information is limited to the cost of copying it.

An original Van Gogh painting is scarce, and thus would have a price much more than the price of the materials. A copy of a Van Gogh painting (either as another painting, or a photograph) is not nearly as scarce, so is would have a much lower price...maybe more than the cost of the materials, but maybe not. Meanwhile, an image file of a Van Gogh painting has infinite supply and can be reproduced for fractions of a penny, so has a price essentially of zero.

As to "worth", that is a relative term. An image file of a Van Gogh painting might be "worth a lot" to someone studying art, since the original might not be easily accessible.

Re:Quit making excuses

[bzipitidoo]

Unfortunately, our system of government has largely been captured and corrupted to serve the interests of the rich and powerful. Congress has enacted many changes to copyright that harm society for nothing. As Lessig complained, the decisions should have been no brainers, but Congress couldn't get there. We should not have seen copyright extended again and again (Sonny Bono), shouldn't have seen such abominations as the DMCA, UCITA, COICA, and most recently ACTA. We shouldn't be treated to all these deliberate confusions and conflations in measures such as the PATRIOT and Communications Decency Acts.

So how should we combat the massive robbery of our culture perpetrated by legalistic extension of copyright terms to what all but a very few agree are far too many years? And the attempts to hold back progress, at immense cost to us all? It is not and never was the will of the people, nor in the public interest, that copyright should last anywhere near as long as it does now. They knew that, but they ignored us and did it anyway. So what should we do?

Re:Quit making excuses

[zeroshade]

The distinction is just as arbitrary as your decision not to see the distinction. You look at it in a black and white world where the only thing that matters at all is the rights of the author and publisher. You ignore the philosophical idea that is the basis of the licenses to begin with.

You see it only as a case of "there is a license which dictates such and such" and "you have violated that license". Which is all well and good from a legal standpoint. I would never argue that, under the current laws, piracy is copyright infringement and is therefore unlawful. The difference is that you care about something that is unjust and damaging to creativity and culture (copyright) and do not see the idea that if the author and publisher do not respect their end of the bargain for copyright to exist, there is no reason for someone else to uphold their end of the bargain to not violate their monopoly.

There is no inherent right for an author or publisher to control an idea they let out to the world. In fact, the very intangibleness of an idea is why once an idea is loosed upon the world you cannot take it back or control it. The only right they are given are through a bargain with the public. That they will be given a short and limited monopoly of their idea in order to profit from it as an incentive to create more ideas. That way people can build upon these ideas.

I think this is a matter of principle

I also think it's a matter of principle, the disagreement here is that our principles do not mesh. Not really much more to it. Just note that the distinction may seem arbitrary to you, while I wonder why you arbitrarily deign to ignore the difference between simply following a license and actually disagreeing with what that license represents and says. Let alone the fact that the license holds you hostage when you can't agree to it until after you have purchased a non-refundable product.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

And what is your recourse when copyright becomes draconian & completely out of hand?

That's right kid, you ignore it.

Re:Quit making excuses

[ptrourke]

I have been posting anonymously for years; I also have another account that I usually use when I want to post something and get some feedback. But I wanted to log in to my original account, with my real name, to post just this short comment:

You, my friend, are a sensible human being. That's all I have to say.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

You say I'm misrepresenting the argument, but you appear to be restating exactly what I said, as we are both talking about a situation where copies of creative works are (effectively) free. Furthermore, we also agree that financing creativity is important.

But there is clearly still some disagreement here. Let me try to find out what it is. Do you agree with the idea of software licencing, i.e. that the right to use a particular program is dependent on possessing a valid licence for it?

If so, then consider an authorised copy of a CD, a DVD or a Bluray disc as a copy that includes a valid licence. An unauthorised copy may be bit-for-bit identical, but it is not the same, as there is a moral difference - the licence is missing. It does not carry the approval of the publisher and the author.

I believe that selling licences, sometimes (but not necessarily) in combination with physical copies, is a perfectly valid way to finance creativity. Sometimes it is the only one available, or at least the only one that makes sense. It is not as if Adobe can fund Photoshop development by going on tour, selling some T-shirts, or even putting a Paypal tip jar on their website. Wouldn't you agree?

Re:Quit making excuses

[Hatta]

Do you agree with the idea of software licencing

No. Software is numbers. Using software is just doing math. Doing math is a fundamental right.

There are certainly ways to compensate those who find useful numbers. Photoshop for instance serves many useful business functions. In the absence of Photoshop, a business that needs those functions would find it profitable to pay developers to implement the functions they need.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

While the BSA numbers are certainly overstated, the fact remains people are stealing someone else's work and trying to justify that theft by claiming, "But they live in a poor country and can't afford it so it's ok to steal" is bullshit.

You've completely missed the point.

Pirating software in poor countries is only theft if there's anything lost. These people don't call tech support. They don't demand you send them a new manual, or get upgrade rights. They typically don't even download updates (because they can't). It's not like they're taking boxed product off the shelf, they download it from a torrent somewhere, costing the shop that made it exactly nothing in distribution or maintenance. And not only wouldn't they have bought it, they couldn't possibly have bought it in the first place, so there's no lost revenue.

The loss of $0 potential revenue and incurring $0 in damages is no loss at all. It's not theft, and they haven't hurt anyone. They're almost entire unrelated to the business of selling software.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

I wondered if this might be the case, but I didn't want to jump to a conclusion. If we cannot even agree that GPL violations are wrong ("just doing math"), then there can be no agreement at all.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument would only apply if every copy made of Van Goghs work was forcibly produced by the man himself, and sold for $0.

Photoshop has value to people. People pay a lot of money for it where they should (by and large). However, if some guy in a poor country downloads a cracked copy of CS2, Adobe has lost nothing in the way of labor, potential revenue, support, devaluation, distribution or any other tangible way I can think of. How can we call that "theft"?

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

You are right, our principles are very different. Your principle seems to come from your belief that copyright "is unjust and damaging to creativity and culture". This is debatable. Furthermore, you appear to think that if you disagree "with what [a] licence represents and says", then you have the right to ignore it and use the software anyway.

As it happens I do think that copyright terms are too long and agree with reform. But the question of whether publishers and authors are keeping their side of the copyright bargain is completely separate from the question of whether bargains should be respected. If you do not like a particular software licence, then don't use the software!

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Valuable art has a lot of different properties that generate value. Not just being a persons IP. Note that copies of Starry Night in google images are worth exactly nothing.

His art is valuable when it's something he made with his own hands, using real materials, as inherently non-reproducible, limited numbers of originals with genuine historical context. Copies are worthless. In the case of Van Gogh, it's not the "IP" that's so valuable, it's the thing.

Re:Quit making excuses

[zeroshade]

Your principle seems to come from your belief that copyright "is unjust and damaging to creativity and culture". This is debatable.

A little bit out of context, though I admit it's my own fault for not clarifying. I meant copyright as it is currently implemented.

Furthermore, you appear to think that if you disagree "with what [a] license represents and says", then you have the right to ignore it and use the software anyway.

If I did not agree to the license, I am not bound by the license. I personally have not pirated any software for many years, I've moved to free alternatives really. This has mostly to do with what is stated elsewhere in this thread, that continuing to pirate that software just results in keeping the marketshare for that software alive and by supporting (and even donating, which I do) to free alternatives, we can make those alternatives better which is better for the community.

If you do not like a particular software license, then don't use the software!

It's not always that simple now is it? When I was in school there were a couple situations where I needed specific software to do my work. The school offered a software package for a specific amount of money which would have given me license to use the program. (Interestingly the way they made it cheaper was because my license would expire as soon as I was no longer a student. Kinda fucked up, innit?) My choices were to pay money I didn't have for software, be unable to do my work except in the limited amount of time that overlapped between the hours of the computer lab and me not being in class, or pirate the software so I would be able to work on my own time and be able to get the the project done. What am I going to choose? Kinda obvious really. The company who made the software loses nothing, I get my work done. Hell, if that class was part of my major I may have gone on to have needed the software in my professional life which would have led to me purchasing it or at least having a license purchased for my by a company.

Things aren't as simple as you make them out to be.

Re:Quit making excuses

[cpu6502]

>>>Bullshit. It is not a privilege, it's a right.

Rather than have two nobodies (me and you) argue back and forth, let's turn to somebody who carries some significant weight (and therefore his opinion is 10x more valuable then you, and cannot be negated): Thomas Jefferson

"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

"Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

i.e. There is NO natural right to you or any corporation (comcast, microsoft, ford) having a monopoly over copying ideas. It is a legal fiction. A privilege. Nothing more.

Re:Quit making excuses

[cpu6502]

>>>I still see the laws on the books so it appears the it hasn't been repealed.

Laws only stand until the People decide to ignore them & start revolting.
It appears the People are revolting. They are copying books, music, movies, and only paying when they FEEL like paying (like when I bought Stargate seasons 1-10), not because of any law passed by a Comcast-bribed politician in Congress (or the FCC) who no longer serves the People.

They are also avoiding wasting their dollars on crap (like transformers 2 or spiderman 3). I consider it a GOOD thing when the poor and middle class citizens SAVE money rather than waste it.

Only a greedy person would be against that idea and want the middling folks to WASTE money.

Re:Quit making excuses

[MeateaW]

Windows costs 100 dollars.
Poor person can afford 50 dollars.

Poor person cant buy windows officially, but gets it "for free" on that PC they just picked up.
They *would* have paid 50 dollars more for their PC if it had legitimate windows. But they can't get it for that price.
Poor person goes and buys a $50 lollipop instead.

BSA calls this "$100 lost to piracy, the world is $100 worse off"
I call that "$50 lost to piracy, the world is $0 worse off"

Stop misrepresenting the facts you intentional moron.

Re:Quit making excuses

[MeateaW]

Put ads in the video they release?

HOLY CRAP that was hard to come up with!

Re:Quit making excuses

[MeateaW]

It wouldn't be a problem for him.

He would change his business model, and not accept returns.

Wow, I am on a major role today, That's problem number 2 solved trivially so far!

Re:Quit making excuses

[enderjsv]

First, he conceded "BSA numbers are certainly overstated," so you're being a bit harsh.

Second, your assumption that "people who can't afford your software not paying for your software is not a lost sale" is a reductionist approach to the problem. Perhaps the person downloading the software cant afford it at the time, but could later. Their motivation to pay for it later is severely decreased if they've already obtained the product. Also, what about competition? Perhaps they couldn't afford the piece of software they had their eyes on, but could afford a lesser, even free copy of software that performed the same task? Ironically, the software pirate in this case hurting everyone as the cheaper software could be gaining a larger portion of the market, thus forcing the prices down in general, but instead denies the competing service the income.

Really, I could come up with a dozen or so other hypothetical arguments to show how ""people who can't afford your software not paying for your software" could still have negative affects on the company creating the software or the industry as a whole, but at the end of the day I doubt it will convince you. Beside, at the end of the day, even if I stipulated 100% that no negative economic impact was felt by piracy, there's still the principal. A person who contributes positively to society deserves to be compensated. A person who does not doesn't deserve to partake of those non-essential services. If you want software (or anything non-essential, for that matter), you should contribute something back.

Re:Quit making excuses

[bzipitidoo]

Vote? That's only playing their game. Powerful interests have managed to fix the game so it doesn't matter who we vote for.

You can't realize the full potential of revolutionary changes by being overly obedient. Too easy for entrenched interests to put the obedient in a no win situation. Any legal move that threatens their interests can be outlawed immediately, no matter how popular it was, and then what? When every way forward has been outlawed, and when we are powerless to undo these changes through legal channels, what is left? Stagnate and decline, or break the law.

Besides which, it's a very inefficient use of our resources to fight in the ways you seem to prefer. We are not going to let these robbers draw us into open ended debates in which the status quo of more robbery is maintained for years and years while the issues are never resolved. A pity we don't have a stronger concept of self defense against bad laws. Just jury nullification. The court cases have been pretty much all backwards. Some of us have been forced to defend ourselves from their accusations, when it should be the other way around. They should be defending themselves, and they should be losing, for the simple reason that they are in the wrong. They could also give up, but they've chosen to engage in war. No, the easiest way is not to wait on the law, but simply to use these marvellous new capabilities. Not to use what we have is crazy. When people pirate music or movies, very likely they choose a far more efficient way of obtaining it than optical media from a distant bricks and mortar business. In my view, that makes them heroes. Until such time as the entrenched interests are brought to heel, their greed curbed, their insolent war against the public and reality ended, and we've adopted new business models acceptable to the public, let the piracy continue. Piracy is the rational and the right thing to do, and the fastest, least costly way to break them and the bad deals they continue to try to force upon us all.

Re:Quit making excuses

[WorBlux]

>

There is no inherent right for an author or publisher to control an idea they let out to the world. In fact, the very intangibleness of an idea is why once an idea is loosed upon the world you cannot take it back or control it. The only right they are given are through a bargain with the public. That they will be given a short and limited monopoly of their idea in order to profit from it as an incentive to create more ideas. That way people can build upon these ideas..

In fact the word publish means "to make public"

Re:Quit making excuses

[MeateaW]

58 billion dollars worth of society has.

Re:Quit making excuses

[WorBlux]

It's a privilege. Copyright is a legal monopoly granted solely by virtue of statute. BTW almost no manufacturing process takes money as a input.

Money just allows a ratio between products to be established moment by moment. This indirect exchange allows simplified accounting and is one of the reasons it's preferred over direct exchange. However a copyright statute would not relegate people to indirect exchange. What it would do would be to shift business models for creative content, not end the world as we know it. Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit taking stupid positions.

Our system of compensation was designed to ensure proper distribution of tangible physical goods and the proper metering out of finite resources that are produced in a market by the labor of others. Tree -> Log -> Paper -> Book. The jump from paper to book is an example of a place where creativity and human mental effort have a chance to generate profit in a way that process efficiency alone generally does not achieve. Paper is cheap, using paper to write the Harry Potter series: Priceless!

Sometimes we get lucky, and can tap into stores of energy the universe has pocketed away, in the form of geothermal, solar, wind, and oil products - you just need to be able to finance the harvesting of said products and are virtually guarantee return on investment unless a superior process is discovered before the initial investment is recouped. Products whose use and duplication aren't tied to a finite and exhaustible resource must be handled with an appropriate system designed for intangibles and concepts.

There is a reason copyright expires. It would be great my my ancestor had been the one to "patent" the idea of basic shapes, and denied everyone use of those ideas without proper compensation, 15,000 years later! How rich I would be, I could tax the sun for being spherical.

Waves, conceptual and physical aren't eternal. Our laws are intended to let creators ride a wave of profitability before the wave dies, and hopefully they then go on to create more with what was earned, and drive humanity forwards. Novel concepts and ideas become public domain as time passes, for good reason.

Piracy and blackmarkets are what occurs when a market fails to properly price and distribute itself. Piracy and blackmarkets will continue until humanity takes reality into account and stops falling prey to false dichotomy and improperly applying systems just because they appear to apply at first glance.

Software, movies, music, math, poems, formulas and forum posts are NOT equal to widgets, tables, chairs and bricks. In some cases the media they inhabit are, and in those cases theft is a valid label of that is how it is obtained.

We need a better system, until one is devised, the piracy will continue. End of story - I'd get to crackin on a new system if it bugs you so much.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

The item "Stuff" in the Encyclopaedia Nobullshitica also includes services rendered.

On a side note, the "Encylopaedia Nobullshitica" (note the missing c) is listed as highly flammable material. Its burning characteristics are unreliable. Either burnt or not, it never serves a fertilizing discussion. It is surpassed by bullshit in every respect, as bullshit provides reliable fuel, digested properly as in a bio gas energy installation, and as bullshit serves as a fertilizer when distributed in soil. The postfix Nobullshitica here serves as a reminder that bullshit is preferable. Notice that the same postfix is used for the encyclopaedia, where it serves as an indicator of its accuracy. The ambiguity in use of this postfix and the similarity in the nouns may confuse the inexperienced user.

Thanks for stepping up the soapbox and volunteering as the next fool slashbot.

Re:Quit making excuses

[stub667]

Good luck applying your moral argument to other countries legal systems. If you charge more than another country finds reasonable, they take that as oppression and exploitation. This is why generic drugs exist. This is why a blind eye is turned to piracy. By charging too much, you have opted out of the trade relationship and nobody really cares what you think or how much you whine, only about what threats you are able to follow through on.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

The paragraph you quoted here confuses "ideas" and "information". The two are not the same.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

But you did have other choices, as you say. You could have used the software in labs if you didn't want to buy it. Even today, degree courses do not even expect you to have your own computer, let alone one that can run the course software.

It's just like course textbooks. They're typically expensive. But if you don't want to buy them, you can find them in the library.

I think you are overcomplicating things that are actually quite simple.

Re:Quit making excuses

[locofungus]

I agree with your point "the value of information is not [necessarily] the same as the cost of copying it."

But I do not accept that pictures by Van Gogh are a good example of this. A van Gogh original might be worth 50M. A copy that can only be recognised as a copy by experts might be worth as much as 1% of that.

There are pictures where the original painter isn't known but there's a chance it is one of the "greats". Painted by the great master it's worth millions. Painted by one of his students it's hundreds of thousands at most. The same picture.

http://tom-flynn.blogspot.com/2010/05/christies-face-lawsuit-over.html

And photographic forgery is even more bizarre. An "original" can be worth a small fortune. A "copy" - same negative, same photographic paper, same developing process, just done by someone else can be worthless.

Tim.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Neil Boekend]

The advertisers will claim the users will skip the ads.
The advertisers will not believe the guestimate of the amount of users that have watched it (on TV there have always been samples, now with the digital systems the data is simply available).
In both cases they will not want to pay as much.

Re:Quit making excuses

[Stray7Xi]

The value is not related to the price. I feel sorry for you if you can't find value in something that wasn't expensive. Piracy adds value to society by spreading the arts.

The value is not defined by the amount of money it raises (and I fail to see how this is linked to piracy rate) but the value of entertainment given to society. Pirates should pay the artists *and* spread it. Which increases the true value of art.

Locking art in a virtual vault, makes the art worthless to all except those who value it for it's pricetag alone.

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

You on the other hand were envisioning the myriad of decisions made by individuals to infringe copyright as constituting societal consensusâ"would you agree with this restatement?â"and I can't say that you're wrong, either.

That's it precisely. That's what civil disobedience is all about. It doesn't require getting arrested either, as some slashbots commonly assert; only that you take the risk of being caught and punished.

Re:Quit making excuses

[drinkypoo]

Really, I could come up with a dozen or so other hypothetical arguments to show how ""people who can't afford your software not paying for your software" could still have negative affects on the company creating the software or the industry as a whole, but at the end of the day I doubt it will convince you. Beside, at the end of the day, even if I stipulated 100% that no negative economic impact was felt by piracy, there's still the principal.

They say the punishment is capital for those that lack the capital, and that principles are for those who can't afford the principals.

A person who contributes positively to society deserves to be compensated.

Your reward for the smell of food shall be the sound of money.

A person who does not doesn't deserve to partake of those non-essential services.

According to whose standard must they be contributor; by whose standard shall we decide what is essential?

If you want software (or anything non-essential, for that matter), you should contribute something back.

I don't disagree. I'm still trying to figure out what the justification is for imprisoning people for using software without permission. I understand fining them. I also want to know in what universe a copy necessarily constitutes a lost sale, which is what we're talking about here. And I want to know in what way it makes sense for an underprivileged resident of a developing nation to send what little money they have out of the country.

Re:Quit making excuses

[zeroshade]

Reading comprehension. You need it.

You could have used the software in labs if you didn't want to buy it

As I stated, the lab hours are very specific and restricted. If you had classes and/or work during most of the time the labs were open, then you weren't going to be able to do much in the labs. It just doesn't work out that way.

Even today, degree courses do not even expect you to have your own computer, let alone one that can run the course software.

That depends on the course. Any technical focused school will indeed expect you to have your own computer. Any technical degree is going to expect you to have your own computer.

It's just like course textbooks. They're typically expensive. But if you don't want to buy them, you can find them in the library.

Except course textbooks can be bought used for very cheap. Software can't. Not only that, but I can check a book out of the library and take it home to use it. You can't do that with software and a lab. So if I have time restraints on only being able to get the library for a short period of time while it is open, it's ok because I can take the book out of the library. If I can only get to the lab during a very short period due to classes and work, then you're saying I should just be SOL.

I think you are overcomplicating things that are actually quite simple.

I think you have a sense of privilege that you don't realize. You are making something out to be simple, when in reality, it's not quite so easy and simple. If everything works out properly and happily, then yes. You can use the software in the lab, get your work done and be happy. Frequently for many people, it doesn't work out so nicely. In that situation you do what you have to do to get your work done.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

"The value is not related to the price. I feel sorry for you if you can't find value in something that wasn't expensive."

Why do you assume that I don't understand this? Is it because I used "value" in the sense of "price", like "the value of this transaction"?

What I reject is the belief that the price of something should be set by pirates, i.e. at the cost of copying, ~$0.

Re:Quit making excuses

[JackDW]

Actually I work at a university, in a CS department.

It would seem unfair to require students to buy software or computers simply in order to get their degree. Any policy that indirectly required this would attract complaints, and in my view those complaints should be upheld.

Therefore, our labs are open all day, and there is plenty of time between lectures and teaching lab sessions to use them. Not only that, we do have two ways that students can "borrow" software exactly like a library book. Firstly, they can connect via rdesktop to a terminal server and use the software there. This is useful when the labs are closed. Secondly, they can install some programs locally, and then access the floating licence server via VPN. We provide free copies of software that can be used in this way.

Maybe your university didn't work like this, but it could and should have done.

Re:Quit making excuses

[zeroshade]

If all universities did precisely as you have stated yours does. Then you're right, there'd be no need to pirate the applications that students do.

Unfortunately, not many universities do that.

stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Stealing software is ok by most peoples account. How would you feel if you spent 3 years writing a software so that you could feed your family and 2 weeks after you release it some one starts giving it away for free ? What you dont understand ? Ok so you spend 3 years building your house and buy all the applicances. 2 weeks after your done someone moves in and says no this is now my house and I am not paying you for all the work you have done.

Re:stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me exactly how you would go about "stealing" someone's software. I'm particularly interested in the part where you deprive the coder of his software so that he can no longer use it.

Re:stealing

[metacell]

If I write a piece of software and it gets 100 paying users and zero pirates, I'm no better off than if I get 100 paying users and 1000 pirates. Count the paying users, not the pirates.

Re:stealing

[bmo]

>If I write a piece of software and it gets 100 paying users and zero pirates, I'm no better off than if I get 100 paying users and 1000 pirates. Count the paying users, not the pirates.

If you write a piece of software and you get 100 paying customers and 1000 warez kiddies, you have 1000 future customers when they need to buy something for work.

--
BMO

Re:stealing

[metacell]

True.

Re:stealing

[Goboxer]

Please explain to me how you would determine prior to release how you would know how many people would buy versus pirate the software? Or how someone whose software is being pirated can predict how many of those pirates would have bought the software if they couldn't pirate it?

Or is your argument just the flipside of the "Every pirate would have bought it" argument, assuming that not one would.

Re:stealing

[Artifakt]

How would you feel if you spent 3 years writing a software so that you could feed your family and 2 weeks after you release it some one starts giving it away for free ?

Probably about like I feel when I buy a CD, and someone claims I accepted a EULA I could only see after the sale, then claims I don't have the right to sell the used CD because what I really own is a licence, Then claims I can't copy the CD to my own computer, and they'll throw me under the jail if I break the DMCA trying.

Re:stealing

[zeroshade]

This ^

Re:stealing

[Kjella]

If you write a piece of software and you get 100 paying customers and 1000 warez kiddies, you have 1000 future customers when they need to buy something for work.

I'm sure that business model works great for Call of Duty. The software that basically exist as training tools for work is only one segment of the software market, and they do usually offer reasonably priced student editions. There's a lot of software that is meant to exist in the consumer market by its own right.

Re:stealing

[bmo]

Piracy for games is already solved, Sunshine.

It's called Steam.

And since the vast majority of games that actually matter to the software industry require a network connection to be fun, the DRM is a no-brainer. It's only when companies go nuts with badly designed DRM that it's bad. Steam gets it right.

The good casual games are on the Wii, and piracy there is next to nothing.

Also, implying that CoD is any good. No. No it's not, and neither is its sequel. Such games can be called graphics demos that you pay for. I would rather play nethack and discover a new way to die. Really, I would.

Anything else you'd like to bring up that I can demolish?

--
BMO

Re:stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

No you dont, you have 1000 people downloading what might be your software without the patches and updates and promotional benefit (to the software publisher) that you would get from users downloading tirals or student discounts. Equating 1000 pirates with potential future sales is as disengenuous as the BSA's cost numbers. And, depending on where they are downloading the software, they might be providing money to someone else via advertising.

Second, what about non-work software? Also no one ever pirated software at a business before? You're inventing your own fantasy land, Sunshine.

If we're gonna criticize the BSA (and rightly so) we should use the same skepitcal critical thinking towards "pro-piracy" arguments.

Re:stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in your world, software only exists for business and games. Dude, seriously, look up "delusional" and "denial"

The funny part is that your past few posts were so fucking stupid and narrow-minded that it's really a testament to how bad Slashdot has become that any got modded up. It takes about 0.003 seconds to realize not all software even fits into your little argument, and that your argument is completely ignoring the fact that the creators of the software are getting their marketing decisions taken away from them for the benefits of the pirates.

Sure, there's some publicity generated. But the effect of that is not something you can use to dismiss via equivocation the harm that piracy causes. It may make you feel better, but it's intellectually dishonest

PS: You really make yourself look like a total fucking tool saying that you "demolish" arguments.

Re:stealing

[bmo]

My oh my, you are so butthurt that you can't be bothered to stand behind your name and take the negative karma.

Nowhere did I advocate copyright infringement, idiot. Indeed, I said earlier in the thread that I wanted DRM to be cranked to 11 to finally end piracy once and for all. I merely pointed out the reality of the situation, that piracy is leveraged by software houses to gain market share.

But you can't be arsed to read the thread, because you are so butthurt that it's filled your mind with incoherent rage.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2148376&cid=36105426

I know you won't read it. Because it goes against your preconceived notion that everyone on /. is pro piracy.

Coward.

--
BMO

Re:stealing

[MeateaW]

Expansion on this then for games just to help you.

If you write a [game] and you get 100 paying customers and 1000 warez kiddies, you have 1100 total people that know of your work from the past that might buy from you next time.

Pirated copies = potential future customers. Unless what you give them is crap.

Re:stealing

[atomicbutterfly]

Why do you have to be so damn insulting with all the "idiot", "sunshine" and "coward" comments? You've already been modded 5, insightful, don't ruin it by looking like an ass.

Re:stealing

[bmo]

Yeah, you're right.

It's just that he did it twice to this thread and it rubbed me the wrong way. I thought about replying to the other one, but I said "fuckit" which is what i should have said to this one.

--
BMO

Re:stealing

[metacell]

No, but I'm saying the number of people who would've bought your program could be very low, and may even be lower than the number of people who buy your program because it was recommended to them by pirating friends. Most of the 1000 people who pirate the program might not even have heard of it if they hadn't found it on a filesharing network.

This seems to be true for the music business; many bands release their music for free, because in the end, they end up making as much money due to the marketing effect when people share their music with their friends. The software industry may work differently, but it may still make more sense to give away your program for free and charge for value-added services, like convenient and guaranteed virus-free updates, add-on packs, access to discussion forums, implementing features on request, and so on.

I think being angry at the pirates because they get something without paying is pointless. Pretend like copyright doesn't exist and copying for private use is just like lending a book or movie to a friend.

Hell, even in developed countries

[Sycraft-fu]

A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

I'm not saying that copying doesn't result in some lost revenue. I'm quite sure that there are sales that would be made if copying was impossible, but aren't because it is. However it is not 100% of copied software, not even close.

I'd imagine the more expensive the software in question, the lower the loss overall. For a $1 phone app, sure I can believe that a significant number of people would buy it, if copying it wasn't possible. For a multi-thousand dollar software package? I bet it is extremely low. The places that can afford it don't mind and want to be legit, the people that copy can't afford it period.

This BS inflated figures don't help anyone, particularly because I think people are starting to wise up. They are realizing that if the numbers really were as big as the anti-piracy orgs want to claim, it would be a real problem.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it.

The student isn't the target market for that piece of software.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's one more reason these students might do better if they try to use Blender instead, especially if it is for the purposes of amateur modelling.

If you told that reason to someone who is still buying BSA's bullshit, they'll just go strawman and tell you the student should have gotten a student edition with limited features, or another cheaper software, and by "stealing" 3DSMax, he is actively competing with professionals in the field, thus decreasing the value of their work and their investments, and that you're still wrong.

Now, if more people used Blender instead, this would stimulate its development and eventually make it good enough to compete with 3DSMax and Maya in terms of capabilities and popularity. When this happens, we'll have a common tool that enables anyone to make 3D modelling like a professional, and the tool would be both free and without a burden of artificial shortage, and it will be also a tool owned by humanity, creating value for us all.

Why copy 3DSMax fuelling BSA's arguments, when you can help in the creation of something better and make 3DSMax irrelevant?

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[bmo]

>The student isn't the target market for that piece of software.

Actually, yes, yes he is.

You learn it while in school and then you buy it professionally when you're working in the industry, or you get your employer to buy it.

Why the fuck do you think that Autocad has the market share that it has? It's certainly not superior to the other CAD packages out there. It's that everybody and his brother pirates the hell out of it when he is 14 and uses it through University and that's the only CAD package he knows.

It's the same with 3DSMax in your example.

The value of piracy is not lost on the publishers at all. If piracy was a real problem, they would use DRM from Hell (like what was used for Microsoft's "Plays for Sure" servers) and stop it forever.

It's not going to happen. Piracy is too important to the software publishing incumbents.

--
BMO

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Vehlin]

Ultimately the whole thing boils down to enforcement. If there were no consequences to me walking into a shop, picking up a laptop and walking out why would I ever pay for one? The same is true for software, if everyone could pirate software with no consequences at all then there would be no disincentive everyone not to do it. You could argue that if everyone did this then everyone would lose out as the developers would go out of business and there would be no software for anyone, however that's just an example of the tragedy of the commons.

The situation we have now is one of Risk vs Reward, if you can't afford something you could try and steal it and you might get caught, as you can't afford it your only choices are to take the risk or not have it, the willingness to take the risk vary depending on perceived need. Whereas if you can afford it, but choose to steal it so you can spend the money on something else then you are taking a bigger risk because the consequences to you are more severe, after all you can't take money away from a beggar that has none.

Back to my original point, the BSA and their ilk are there to make sure the people who DO buy the product continue to do so rather than try and cut corners. They make the big noise about lost revenue because they need those figures to make sure they can convince governments to keep the consequences harsh.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Siener]

A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

I'm not saying that copying doesn't result in some lost revenue. I'm quite sure that there are sales that would be made if copying was impossible, but aren't because it is. However it is not 100% of copied software, not even close.

Not only is that not a lost sale, that is extremely good marketing that they're getting for free. People who get to know and like software that they pirate will probably buy that software when they can afford to or when they start using that software for business.

I still buy and use development tools that I got to know from pirating them while I was a student. Another example: As a kid I played pirated games and only pirated games. My parents would not buy them and I couldn't afford them. That made me a lifelong gamer and in the years since I started working I've spent thousands of dollars on games, consoles, etc.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Amorymeltzer]

A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

That's been the perceived argument behind a lot of the truly expensive arts-related software, like Photoshop, that has been "pirated" widely. Nobody learning a tool can afford any of them, but if that person has a free copy when the time comes that they actually need to use it for a for-profit/professional enterprise they or their company will pay for it. Same goes for a lot of Microsoft's products. Sure, pirated copied abound, but at least that means they're locked into your system. Half a loaf of bread is better than none.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[CFBMoo1]

"A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money."

http://www.blender.org/

They can still get the free alternatives available. There's also student discount pricing available for non-free products. One way or another they don't have to steal and if their instructor requires they use a product they can't afford it usually is installed in the computer labs so all the student would have to invest is lab time.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[thsths]

> That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

That is the key statement: pirated copies do not equal lost sales. People who really use the software usually require support, and they will by the product and the support. Pirated copies are often just used to mess around, or to impress. So the numbers are hugely inflated.

It is a bit like calling everybody who didn't buy you product a potential customer. Yes, that may be true for some definition of potential, but there is no point in calculating the number, because it ain't gonna happy.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it.

The student isn't the target market for that piece of software.

But the BSA isn't removing all piracy that is done by people not in the target market for a given piece of software when they calculate their numbers; they are using worst-case scenario numbers to make piracy appear as damaging as possible. The point the GP made still stands: Some piracy is committed by people that the software vendor was NEVER going to get a sale from anyway.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[moofmonkey]

The student who learns .e.g 3DSMax - even though he got his software for free, is in fact expanding the base of available people who can use it, the "ecosystem" if you like, which indirectly benefits the maker. Companies choosing this software over others because of labour availability, will buy licenses. It actually makes sense for a software developer to surreptitiously allow piracy in most cases. Their real customer base won't be affected, but their market conditions will improve significantly.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[cHALiTO]

So you're agreeing that the parent is right: that student's copy of 3DSMax is NOT a lost sale?

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Anonymous Coward]

That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

That is the key statement: pirated copies do not equal lost sales. People who really use the software usually require support, and they will by the product and the support. Pirated copies are often just used to mess around, or to impress. So the numbers are hugely inflated.

It is a bit like calling everybody who didn't buy you product a potential customer. Yes, that may be true for some definition of potential, but there is no point in calculating the number, because it ain't gonna happy.

It's funny you say that as a couple of months ago I was talking to some people employed during the dotcom boom who said that they were employed by companies whose business model was literally: "There are 6bn people in the world. If 1% of that pay us, we'll be rich." Unfortunately, they didn't have anything to actually sell.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Kjella]

There's the "You could find the money, if you really needed too". No matter how poor the student claims to be, I've never seen one that couldn't in some way find beer money. It's pretty hard to get beer without the money for it, while it it's pretty easy with the software so if you can't afford both you buy the beer and pirate the software. I'm a poor student, I can't afford it after all my 'necessary' expenses right? Particularly if you set it up so you "had to" get the ultra extreme pro enterprise package at full retail.

Ultimately it's their choice if they want to be fools and only offer a 3500$ package. If they don't want to offer any light/express/student/personal/whatever edition, then you don't really have the right to say "Hey I'm taking this but I'm really doing you a favor." Same with the "marketing" defense if they don't want to promote this way. Mostly what you're promoting is that everyone else downloads it too, why should the one you market it to be the fool who buys it when no one else does?

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Anonymous Coward]

What manner of 3D classes have you gone to what lets you use Blender in lieu of either 3DS or Maya? (eg, whatever the instructor is familiar with, which likely isn't Blender)

I've never heard of such a place.

Re:Hell, even in developed countries

[Anonymous Coward]

The places that can afford a $3500 software package aren't buying the software, they're buying the support.

really?

[ciderbrew]

FTFA
1) Determine how much PC software was deployed during the year.
2) Determine how much was paid for or otherwise legally acquired during the year.
3) Subtract one from the other to get the amount of unlicensed software.

Who hear makes and sells software and or hardware?
Did they ask you?

Re:really?

[metacell]

Nah, I'm sure it's much more scientific than that. You need to make an advanced formula that takes into account the substitution rate, the market segmentation, and the regression towards the mean, prove it works given some reasonableassumption, and finally apply it to the numbers you pulled out of a hat.

Re:really?

[ciderbrew]

I copied the text from their website :( http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2010/methodology.html

Re:really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont forget that the figures in 1) are based on the full retail price. Even if there was no piracy there would still be a difference because of discounts
on most software sold.

Re:really?

[metacell]

I was just being ironic :)

Re:really?

[ciderbrew]

I know. I was being very upset by this whole thing.
perhaps I should a wrote "but I copied text from their website?! :( "
I think we both agree it's ridiculous.

Re:really?

[metacell]

Absolutely - it's just propaganda, and it's ridiculous there are still politicians falling for it.

The truth is, you're a liar.

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is that most people just don't want to pay for the products. People will spend $$$ on hardware, such as I-Pad, I-Pod, tablets, cell phones, game stations only because they can't steal it and get it for free. If these devices were as easy to steal the sales would drop along with revenue.

The truth is that people rationalize their own excuses for theft by blaming "the other person", who for various reasons is justified. Therefore, I won't feel bad when I steal.

As for creating jobs and bringing in tax revenues, look at it from the opposite view that the lose of jobs and lose of tax revenues from the lack of sales of the products because of theft would be lessened. As for the amount, we'll always disagree. Those that are thieves will cry the loudest as they are so angered at being called out.

The pain and anger that that they feel in their heart is the difference between the truth, and what they want the truth to be.

Re:The truth is, you're a liar.

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. Who wants to pay $499 for a tablet PC, $500 for a phone, another $299 for a PS3, and then have money to buy the important things like, food, room and board? And beer...

Re:The truth is, you're a liar.

[gonk]

This about sums it up. What it tells me is that many of these folks have never produced anything in their life, much less a piece of software that people want.

robert

Boy Scouts of America...

[aapold]

I got my anti-piracy merit badge....

Software DRM knob turned to 11

[bmo]

I'd like to see Ballmer's previous threats to crank WGA and OGA to 11.

I'd love to see DRM schemes that turn computers with illegitimate copies of software into smoking heaps.

It'll never happen, though. Copyright infringement is too important to the industry incumbents to actually stop it. File sharing locks out alternatives, both commercial and free. Why pay for an alternative when you can crack the market leader for free? If the world suddenly discovered there was software besides Windows, Microsoft Office, Autocad, and Photoshop, there would be more competition.

Ending piracy would end much of the market distortion that favors the incumbents at the expense of the rest.

Do it, guys, if you have any balls.

--
BMO

Re:Software DRM knob turned to 11

[lennier1]

I'd love to see DRM schemes that turn computers with illegitimate copies of software into smoking heaps.

If it's done by the same people who did WGA we're in for a ton of fun. Last time I checked WGA was said to have a rate of false positives somewhere in the neighborhood of 97.7%.

Re:Software DRM knob turned to 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Done here. I'm architectural draftsman and for the first time in my life I can work with neither Autodesk or Microsofts products, thanks to freee open software (Blender, YafaRay, Libre Office, Firefox) and freeware (Draftsight by Dassault Systems). There is still some way to go before this becomes a reality for a significative chunk of the market though.

Re:Software DRM knob turned to 11

[bmo]

There are Unix CADs that you can buy, but they are all "wicked expensive" like Catia and UG/NX. And these packages do not have student editions, which is really stupid in my opinion. I use UG/NX at work.

Personally, for home use on Linux, I use VariCAD. It's about the same price as Photoshop. Be aware that it relies on the latest ATI drivers. It will run like poo on the open source driver.

It has a student license. http://www.varicad.com/en/home/products/students-&-universities/

For Windows and personal use/low budgets and if you don't need solid modeling, I've always been a big fan of TurboCAD, but this does not run in wine reliably. It's really a shame - I've used it since Windows 3.1. If you use Windows, I highly recommend it instead of pirating Autocad.

If you need 2D and want it for free, there's DraftSight from Dassault.

--
BMO

Re:Software DRM knob turned to 11

[RogerWilco]

Yeah, not just CAD. I find that once you get outside the most used areas, there often isn't a program for Linux, at least not FOSS, or with very limited functionality compared to commercial alternatives.

Sure, I could go and write my own. But in my spare time I can't reproduce the full efforts of Adobe, AutoDesk, Corel, Wolfram, Mathworks, etc.

I think I just wish that it was easier for companies to develop cross-platform, so more commercial software would be available outside Windows, and with more differentiated licences. Not everyone wants to use Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop professionally, often it's non-profits like schools, churches, hobby clubs, and then the price tags are steep.

Re:Software DRM knob turned to 11

[atomicbutterfly]

I've tried it, I've really tried ending my piracy (both software as well as media). It's really, really fucking hard. There's just so much bad free software when compared to their commercial equivalents it's disappointing. They generally "work", but often aren't as pleasurable to use (and any method of keeping down stress is useful, and a nice to use program is far better than a functional but irritation one).

As for media, some stuff is acceptable, but most content simply can't match what's punched out commercially. Ultimately it doesn't matter what I do, as it will not affect the rest of the world, so why put myself under such limits? That's why I don't have the balls.

Broken Window Fallacy Fallacy

[ZombieBraintrust]

Bastiat himself, apply the parable of the broken window in a different way. Suppose it was discovered that the little boy was actually hired by the glazier, and paid a franc for every window he broke. Suddenly the same act would be regarded as theft: the glazier was breaking windows in order to force people to hire his services. Yet the facts observed by the onlookers remain true: the glazier benefits from the business at the expense of the baker, the cobbler, and so on. Bastiat argues that people actually do endorse activities which are morally equivalent to the glazier hiring a boy to break windows for him: Whence we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: "Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed;" and we must assent to a maxim which will make the hair of protectionists stand on end—To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labour; or, more briefly, "destruction is not profit." What will you say, Moniteur Industriel[5]—what will you say, disciples of good M. F. Chamans, who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild?

Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[QuasiSteve]

You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.

Students can get student discounts - especially if their area of education actually deals with e.g. 3D content production.

But more importantly - every time somebody downloads 3ds Max "to play with", that means they may -not- be downloading, for example, Blender to play with. Or any other free or cheap 3D graphics application.

I wish people who 'defend', or rather 'excuse', so-called pirates using whatever argument they come up with this time would use that energy to instead promote other, affordable, solutions.. as the companies/people behind those solutions are ultimately who get hurt by piracy more than the companies behind the major multi-thousand dollar pirated product.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[hedwards]

Have you seen the student rates on some of those bits of software? It's not unusual for companies to ask hundreds of dollars for the student version. Now, if they let the students use it for a couple quarters before paying, that would be one thing, but paying that kind of money without knowing if he's going to like the class is just greedy. It's great when corporations are so short sited as to gouge students because they might not have a chance to gouge them later.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[jank1887]

exactly. As I posted up above, you are disturbing the demand part of the price decision point. That demand doesn't only affect the price of the software in question, it drives the development of alternatives. Matlab is expensive, so there is a demand for Octave. if legit organizations could pirate matlab and get the job done, there would be a lot fewer developers, and we probably wouldn't have Octave.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[WhirlwindMonk]

What? As a student I can get 3DSMax for 90% off? That's an awesome deal! I think I'll go buy it ri- oh. It's still $350. Well then.

That said, there are ways to get the software legally for free as a student. I know plenty of people who have done that when it was available and I'm still kicking myself for not taking advantage of it while I was still in college.

So let me ask you this. I used Pro-Engineer in college, an excellent 3D Cad program that costs something like $6000-8000 per license. Even the student version is several hundred if I were still in school. I've been out of college for over a year and my current job does not require me to use 3D Cad at all, but the jobs I'm aiming for once I have some experience will. How can I legally keep myself in practice on any CAD software I'm not currently using at work (I only use 2D AutoCAD at work)? I certainly can't afford to drop months worth of income on a piece of software for purely personal use(and I don't have enough money in the bank even if I stupidly decided to try), and messing with getting a friend still in college to get the Academic license and handing it off to me is just as morally borderline as pirating in my mind, not to mention a lot more complicated. So what do I do to keep my skills up-to-date and competitive without becoming a criminal in some form or another?

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[zeroshade]

Student discounts are generally still too high. Photoshop costs around $650 (give or take) the Student Discount is still a whopping $250 or so. Very rarely will a student be able to afford that

As for suggesting other affordable solutions. I can only speak for myself, I do. The problem of course is a vicious cycle, people pirate software to learn it because that is the current software in use by the industry. The industry uses the software because that is where the labor availability is. The labor availability is because everyone went and learned that software because it's what the industry uses.....and so on.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[rimcrazy]

You can get 3dsMAX, the full version, completely functional, for FREE. This is not warz or cracks. Autodesk gives students a 36 month free license on a significant portfolio of their software. It is the real deal. No watermarks. Sign up here: http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=login&logout=1
You need to register and you must use a valid school email, ie, it ends in .edu.
I teach Maya at Phoenix College and encourage all my students to get this deal. It is truly amazing and you simply can't beat it. You can license the software on two machines so you can support your desktop and your laptop.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[rimcrazy]

Wrong. 80% off.

http://www.academicsuperstore.com/products/Adobe/Photoshop+Extended/1391247

Still costs $200 which is not cheap but that is not $650.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[zeroshade]

Wrong. 80% off

Wait...I said "$250 or so" and you're going to say I'm wrong because the actual price is $200?

You do realize that you didn't prove me wrong about anything? Rarely will a student be able to afford to spend $200 on a piece of software.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[Andy_R]

The really odd thing is that this very generous model actually does lose sales. After wasting hours trying to deal with Maya's complete disregard for all Apple's usuability guidelines, and it's constant preference corruption, I've dropped all the animation modules from my university degree. If I hadn't been able to try before I buy I might actually have wasted £3500 on an unstable mess with one of the worst excuses for a user interface I've ever seen, after graduating.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[RogerWilco]

I'm not sure if I would be eligible for that program, but it seems quite nice and permissive. I don't see the .edu requirement anywhere. As I don't live in the USA, those types of domains are not available to me.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[rimcrazy]

$40k - $60k on tuition and you can't spring for highly discounted software which in many cases is free? Not buying it.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[rimcrazy]

Good for you!..... clearly you must buy all your software from PerfectSoftware.com where all of the software conforms to the UI as you think it should and is completely bug free. Good luck with that. I'm sure that kind of attitude will suit you very well in the workplace where you will have to use the software they want you to use, not what you think is perfect.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[gknoy]

If you can't justify $250 for it, chances are you don't NEED Photoshop, and can use either the ones in the lab, or free alternatives. If you're a graphic arts student who really DOES need Photoshop, then suck it up and buy it: Consider it equivalent to buying a graphing calculator or a stack of physics textbooks.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[spire3661]

Do you even think before you post? 40k-60k on tuition and you cant figure out why $250 extra is expensive?

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[zeroshade]

Physics textbooks can be bought used or a group of people can pool money and share to buy. Neither is possible with photoshop. (A student license is for a single person not multiple installations.

Graphing calculators can also be bought used, in addition they don't cost anywhere near $250. Usually closer to $80 or $90.

chances are you don't NEED Photoshop

True. In many cases people don't need it. But these are the people who know that the industry standard is Photoshop and therefore they should know it in order to get a job, even if a free alternative will do the job for school.

can use either the ones in the lab, or free alternatives

Labs have hours and limited resources, it is not comparable to having your own copy. Free alternatives would be preferable, but as I said above, going with the Industry Standard application is better for learning what you'll be expected to know as a professional.

If you're a graphic arts student who really DOES need Photoshop, then suck it up and buy it

Will you help pay for someone who needs it to buy it? I doubt it. It's kinda fucked up to assume that everyone who goes to school for graphics design would have the disposable money to pay $250 for Photoshop. These are the same people who will drive businesses to purchase licenses wholesale of photoshop. Why do you think Adobe doesn't crack down on it? Give me a break, Adobe benefits the most from piracy of Photoshop due to keeping market share.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[zeroshade]

How many people pay $40k - $60k out of their pocket to go to school? Very few. The vast majority are a combination of scholarships and loans while paying some out of pocket to reduce the amount of loans. Therefore your argument is disingenuous, no one is first paying $40k and then turning around after spending it and going "Wow, that $250 is really expensive!".

Highly discounted software which in many cases is free?

If the software was free, then there's no discussion is there? There's no need to pirate something that is free. Nor is there any possible argument for lost revenue or stealing if it is being given away for free. As for being "highly discounted" if it's not affordable, it's not affordable. It doesn't matter how much you discount off the price. If offered to fix a leak in your plumbing for $100,000 and told you that my regular price is really $1,000,000 and i'm giving you a 90% discount, does that make the $100,000 any more affordable and mean that you'll take it? Absolutely not.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[rimcrazy]

Do you think at all? Most schools require a computer these day. If I was pursing a degree in graphic arts or something of the like and it was truly what I wanted to pursue as a career, then I would spend the required $$ needed to get the training on the software required to do the job. Assuming you shell out 50K for your degree and your total software expense is 1k. That is 2% of your expenses are software. Sounds reasonable to me. Quit your bitchen and either pay for what you need or steal it. I don't care. Point is education is expensive. Try none. That's more expensive. There are significant alternatives to keep your costs down. I know most of my students use pirated software. I don' care but I do reinforce the fact that there are significant deals out there for students that they can take advantage of. Many of which, if you purchase the student version, you can still get a very large discount to upgrade to the commercial version once you graduate.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[rimcrazy]

No it is not disingenuous at all. I worked my way through college too. It's called a budget. Gee you need so much for tuition, so much for books, so much for R&B and so much for calculators, computers and software. Add that up and that is what you get the loan for or that is the number you save for. Your being disingenuous in saying you are willing to pay for food, tuition, and everything else BUT..... when it comes to software I'm just going to steal it because I can and I think it is too expensive. BS. You want to steal, steal. I don't care but don't give the BS you can't afford it when you are paying for everything else. Quit trying to justify your actions by saying it is too expensive.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[zeroshade]

So I took a class in college which required me to use a specific piece of software. I had choices of course. I could work in the computer lab during the severely limited overlap between the hours of the computer lab and me not being in class or working, or I could purchase the software from the company, or I could pay the school for their bundle of software (which they made relatively cheap because your license expired when you were no longer a student there and thus you were expected to remove the programs.) This class wasn't part of my major and if I didn't spend enough time working on the projects I wouldn't pass the class. So what do you think I did? I certainly wasn't going to shell out money for a program that I was going to use once to pass a class and that's it (even textbooks can be sold back. Software can't.) Obviously, I pirated a copy and got my work done.

It's nice that you use the terminology of "stealing" software because it's anything but. There's no BS here. As a student you save money whereever you can. 90% of any software that you "need" in college, unless it's part of your major such as Photoshop for a graphics designer, you aren't going to use it outside of that class or two. There's no reason to spend hundreds of dollars for a program that you aren't going to use except to do assignments in a class. Even the calculator could be sold back to someone. Pirating an application deprives the author of NOTHING. I was not going to be able to afford it, there was no lost sale there. As is the case with most college students.

As has been said, piracy is a symptom of software being priced outside of the range of it's market. They may not consider it their market, but if it's required then that makes it part of the market. Believe what you like, but there's no theft here. No stealing. There is copyright infringement, yes. But the end result is professionals who know how to use software and will use it in their professional lives which generate sales for the companies. Why do you think the big name companies don't care about piracy. You think Adobe has a problem with the 19 year old computer graphics student who pirated Photoshop? Of course not, that's a future customer right there.

Re:Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim

[hitmark]

And the same cenario applies to music and movies/tv-series as well. Those that are most likely to download copies are the ones that have the least discretionary spending ability, and the most free time to sort thru the various sites and systems for what they want.

In a way its like the reverse of micropayment MMOs. Where one can spend hours grinding some monster or other for xp, or pay the company for a time limited boost to the xp rate. End result is the same. But the question is what's more valuable to you, time or money.

Buying a Naked PC? You must be a pirate!

[Snorbert Xangox]

A few years back, when last I looked, the BSAA (local Australian tentacle/surrogate of the BSA) were treating each PC sold as representing a certain quantity of licensed software that would be in use. They then compared this with some software license sales figures (the accuracy of which is another question), and if there were more deemed licenses in use through new PC sales than there were actual license sales, (guess what! there were!!) then that was their damning evidence that teh piratez were stealing Christmas.

This meant that some 40 staff desktops and 120 teaching laboratory computers at my workplace (a university CS department) which were bought with no OS license and installed with Debian, actually contributed to the BSAA's frothy-mouthed argument that rampant piracy was costing Australia many quality local jobs employing drones to process purchases of software produced overseas by US companies... that incidentally booked most of their profits via subsidiaries based in Ireland, thanks to its low low rate of corporate tax at that time.

So there you have it:
- I am a pirate
- my work was full of piracy
- you probably are a pirate too

because I/they/you have the temerity to buy machines with no OS to run free operating systems and free applications.

cost to kill innocent residents; several trillion

[Anonymous Coward]

why not disarm? weapons, media, vaccines, weather manipulation etc.. the savings would be immediate & it's what life itself would prefer. thank you. thankful thursday?

It IS stealing.

[Singularity42]

Those who argue otherwise are typical drug banning, gun banning, right-wing liberal gay people living in their grandma's attic.

Better idea...

[scharkalvin]

Hey BSA get THIS though your thick numbskull! Copying software isn't theft unless the thief: (A)would have paid for the software had the copy not been made available to him, or (B)sold the copies on the black market for whatever he could have got for it. In case A: your loss is ZERO if the copier would not have bought your overpriced software had he not gotten the copy. In case B: your loss is only what the illegally copied software was sold for (assuming the buyer would NOT have bought your overpriced software had the bootleg copy not been available). Case B happens mostly in Asia where you are held in the lowest regard.

So suggestion..... If you want to avoid piracy why not accept ALL offers made by would be copiers to buy your overpriced software for what THEY feel it is worth to THEM. Isn't it better to get a reduced price for your software than NOTHING? If anyone does make you such an offer they should get the same service/support from you that they would if they copy the software (IE: NONE) since that is the perceived value of overpaying for software.

I'm gonna be famous!

[Errol backfiring]

I'll just copy some illegal software a million times and I will be known as the worst thief on the planet!

Re:I'm gonna be famous!

[kmdrtako]

What kind of illegal software are you copying? Inquiring minds want to know.

Oh, you're making illegal copies of legal software. Never mind.

Re:I'm gonna be famous!

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems like a lot of work. To help you, I'm selling a fart app for $1 trillion. I haven't sold any copy yet, but if you pirate it and report it to the BSA, I'm sure they will be happy to add $1 trillion to their 2011 figure.

Re:I'm gonna be famous!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just copy some illegal software a million times and I will be known as the worst thief on the planet!

Just the other day I copied some software from one folder to another and then got pissed at myself for stealing from myself.

Re:I'm gonna be famous!

[Ant P.]

#!/usr/bin/yes "BSA is racketeering scum"

I am licencing the above software for the low, low price of 50 euros, plus a subscription of only 15 cents for every 10 lines of truth printed to standard output

Re:I'm gonna be famous!

[JonySuede]

Yeah the worst thief, that is pretty much it !

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Re:Buying a Naked PC? You must be a pirate!

[Anonymous Coward]

we should all be thanking the scientists that use Linux for supercomputing... can you simply imagine what weather forecasts Windows or the BSA would give instead?
- "ten meters of snow in Spain"
- polar bears are depleting the fish in the ocean
- and so on...

How do They Know?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear what poster says about counting the number of unlicensed installs, I just don't know how BSA might think they are counting them.

BSA

[DaMattster]

There is absolutely no corollation between software piracy and jobs. While lesser minds will easily be fooled into this argument, those who are more intelligent will see right through this. In fact, software piracy and jobs are totally unrelated which makes this "study" laughable. If anything, by vigorously enforcing copyright and licensing, there will be fewer copies of said software to support meaning fewer jobs for skilled technicians. This basically takes the BSA argument and nullifies it. As an open source advocate, I do not condone software piracy at all but these efforts to fight it are largely misguided and the dues that the software industry pays the BSA would be better spent elsewhere. An entire industry has grown up around software piracy so as much as they preach against it, the lawyers that specialize in this kind of thing depend upon it for their livelihood. This is what makes the BSA so absolutely absurd. We are seeing another rehash of the sue for windfall profits and hide behind a non-profit organizational umbrella a la RIAA and MPAA. The BSA, RIAA, and MPAA should be required by law to show their corporate incomes and make them publicly available. They are tax-exempt, their lawyers are reaping the benefits, and everyone else suffers under stifled innovation.

Boy Scouts of America?

[kmdrtako]

Considering that the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) was able to make the World Wrestling Federation change their name, you'd think that the Boy Scouts of America could do the same to the Business Software Alliance.

A quick check of TESS at uspto.gov shows many other registrations of BSA, but I never see those. (And don't bother to tell me about scoutings, i.e. BSA's, problems. I know all about them, and despite them, scouting is still doing plenty of other good things.)

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Why it is stealing

[MikeRT]

One of the definitions of stealing is:

to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

When you acquire software without following the legal route, you're doing so without "right or acknowledgment."

There is no obfuscation here from the BSA on the simple fact that copyright infringement is a class of theft. The real obfuscation comes from the fact that they use faulty data to make a basis for creating unconscionable contracts or the perception that a user is in a contractual relationship with them (which is not true in many areas since EULAs don't care force of law in most jurisdictions).

Re:Why it is stealing

[Sancho]

That's a relatively new definition, and it shows that the BSA brainwashing is working. Remember, dictionaries don't dictate meaning, they catalog how words are being used.

Re:Why it is stealing

[Bobb Sledd]

And yet their calculation of how much piracy cost is still inaccurate and arbitrary at best. If Adobe decided that Photoshop should cost $150,000 and I decided to pirate it, it doesn't mean they lost $150,000 in software sales. Simply because I don't even make that much and could never afford the product at that price no matter what.

But what is also missing from the equation is the benefit Adobe gains if I *do* pirate their software. If I am a home user, and I pirate Photoshop, and I learn the software and become quite good with it, and if I land a job doing graphics, my employer will ask what software I want to use. I will more likely say "Photoshop" because that is what I know. Thus, in that instance, they actually got a sale they probably wouldn't have otherwise, because I would have just learned Gimp or some other free graphics editor, and just suggested to use that instead.

Sound impossible? I just described my situation exactly.

Re:Why it is stealing

[cpu6502]

>>>stealing - to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

I disagree with this definition. You have a right to create, but you don't have a natural right to get credit/acknowledgement for the idea. "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." - Jefferson

While some societies see the benefit of giving a *temporary* monopoly to authors and inventors (or corporations named Microsoft), other societies have no such restriction, and they appear to be just as innovative, successful, and vibrant as the United States. (examples: China, India, Russia)

Re:Why it is stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

'One of the definitions of stealing'

That may be true of the definition that appears on dictionary.com... however it's easy to find higher quality dictionaries that have slightly different definitions when it comes to ideas/credit/words and they generally go along the lines of the one from oxforddictionaries.com (a lightweight version of the OED):

                  dishonestly pass off (another person‘s ideas) as one’s own

Note the notion of plagierism for it to become stealing, so no, acquiring software without permission of the author is not stealing as it is not being represented as one's own product. It *is* copyright violation at worst.

It would appear that the *AA and BSA types have been trying to rewrite the dictionary to their ends when they know that most people will be lazy enough to go for dictionary.com and assume it's a definative resource... tricky buggers.

Re:Why it is stealing

[somersault]

Both sides are trying to brainwash the other. We say stealing because it is natural to do so. Imagine two kids in a science class, and one copies the other's project. The first kid wouldn't say "hey, you infringed on my intellectual property!", he'd say "hey, you stole my idea!". It's not seen as offensive as stealing physical property, but it's still through of as stealing. We naturally assign value to our ideas (perhaps amplified by stuff like school and grading, I don't know), and that was put into law as copyrights and patents to stop grown-ups acting like lazy children who don't want to work for anything.

Re:Why it is stealing

[Kjella]

One of the definitions of stealing is:

to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.

Ah, but as you may notice this definition is invalid if you give acknowledgement. This is about quoting without citation, to take what someone else has produced as your own. Then yes, informally we say "He stole my song."

There is no obfuscation here from the BSA on the simple fact that copyright infringement is a class of theft.

No, you can't take any random definition and conclude it's a legal definition. Otherwise "to steal a kiss" would be a class of theft.

Re:Why it is stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the definitions of appropriatet is:

to take exclusive possession of

When you copy software, no matter if you follow a legal route or not, you are doing so without "stealing".

Stealing = substraction.
Copying = Addition (even multiplication).

You see? They are antonyms. You should learn how to use a dictionary or throw away the one which obfuscates you.

Re:Why it is stealing

[h4rr4r]

No he would say, "he copied my paper!" That is the correct word, because it is accurate.

Re:Why it is stealing

[CastrTroy]

But in that case, as a home user, you should really buy Photoshop Elements, because it's in the price range and capabilities of a home user. If you fell you need all the feautres of the full CS version, maybe you should cough up the money. If you feel that Elements still isn't worth the price, you should just use a different software package that offers a better price (or is free). There is so much free software out there that I almost wonder why people risk all the viruses and other problems that come along with pirated software (yes not all sources do, but you still have to be quite careful) that I wonder why anybody bothers.

Re:Why it is stealing

[somersault]

I specifically chose the example of a "project" rather than an essay, ie a practical experiment. "Stealing an idea" doesn't even have to involve copying something exactly, but copying something exactly falls within stealing someone's idea.

Re:Why it is stealing

[justforgetme]

Exactly, piracy still helps Companies like adobe and autoDesk get market share and build economies around their products. not only that but piracy does actually help create monopolies in this sense, since it makes competitor software even free one obsolete. Then those companies will just use their 90% penetration to put that inflated price tag on their product and even try to justify it.

Not only that but in the country I live in a single license of 3dsmax costs as much as one years salaries of the person who will operate it. And don't even get me started about other countries!

I'm not supporting piracy, I don't like piracy and until now I have usually found an open alternative pretty easily. In fact I'm running my shop on 100% foss, so there you go!

Here's to InkScape!

Re:Why it is stealing

[pnutjam]

If it costs $150k, your employer will probably "ignore" you pirating it, or force you to use something else.

Re:Why it is stealing

[Mikkeles]

You should quote someone who actually had original ideas.

Re:Why it is stealing

[SirGeek]

Imagine two kids in a science class, and one copies the other's project. The first kid wouldn't say "hey, you infringed on my intellectual property!", he'd say "hey, you stole my idea!".

And the teacher would say the 2nd kid "plagiarized" the 1st kids work. Its not the same thing as denying a software producer additional income. They have not had their property stolen (i.e. install discs, etc.) but they've had their product copied (which denies them a sale but does not remove from them any property).

Re:Why it is stealing

[Dunbal]

There is already a better word for that: plagiarism.

Re:Why it is stealing

[dgatwood]

If Adobe sold a full version of Photoshop for non-commercial use, that would be a valid argument. Arguing that a watered down version of Photoshop is affordable isn't because it doesn't counter the original point.

If I buy Elements for me and I go to work for a company and they ask what software I want to use, I'm going to say Elements because it was good enough for my own personal work. And if they buy me the full version of it and I discover something really useful, odds are I'm going to pirate it for personal use. (This is hypothetical, BTW—I own a fully licensed Photoshop, not Elements, for personal use.) Either way, they've "lost" the sale of a full copy of Photoshop.

At best, you might argue that one should buy the cheap version, then pirate the more expensive one so that you're at least paying something for it, but according to BSA logic, you pirated a copy of Photoshop that you otherwise would have bought (even if you wouldn't have).

Further, the majority of piracy happens in developing nations, where the people make single-digit U.S. dollars per week. They could afford Elements if they just gave up food for a year. See how silly that argument looks when put in the proper perspective?

Re:Why it is stealing

[CastrTroy]

the majority of piracy happens in developing nations

. Is that per capita or overall? Citation Needed Maybe? While I have no doubt that software piracy is rampant in developing nations, I have seen plenty of software piracy in the western world as well, with plenty of people who have more than enough money still not paying for the software they use on a daily basis. The BSA doesn't go around talking to developing nations. As far as I'm aware, they only harass businesses that are using unlicensed software. So this whole personal use or third argument that people keep on bringing up is outside the scope of conversation anyway.

Re:Why it is stealing

[PopeRatzo]

but they've had their product copied (which denies them a sale

What proof do you have that it "denies them a sale"?

Do you believe necessarily that everyone who has used a torrent copy of a game or application would have been a buyer of that product if it wasn't for the illicit copy?

Re:Why it is stealing

[cpu6502]

I can't believe you just accused Thomas Jefferson of being a thief. He was the second-smartest president who ever served, with an IQ of ~170. That's Einstein or Hawking level intelligence.

You are like a mental midget next Mr. Jefferson and have no more right to insult him, than a monkey to call a human being "stupid".

Re:Why it is stealing

[atomicbutterfly]

There is so much free software out there that I almost wonder why people risk all the viruses and other problems that come along with pirated software (yes not all sources do, but you still have to be quite careful) that I wonder why anybody bothers.

People will risk pirating software instead of using free alternatives if it gives them something the free alternative doesn't. Reasons I can think of could be:
1. It's what's used everywhere else, hence no desire to fight the status quo and deal with issues resulting from it.
2. Related to 1, if everyone uses it, you have the maximum level of support (friends, forums, etc).
3. If you're already using a pirated tool, it's easier to stick with what you know rather than moving to a free alternative.
4. A lot of free alternatives simply suck. They either lack the features/functionality, or have major usability issues that result in more mouse clicks, a greater amount of time to accomplish a task compared to their commercial alternatives, or simply give you a headache because of the lousy interface. GIMP vs Photoshop comes to mind here.
5. If you're experienced in these matters, you'll know how to get pirated software in the safest manner. Heck, the entire master collection of CS5 can be used without requiring a single binary crack if you know how the hosts file works.

There's a reason Linux hasn't made headway on the desktop, and I wonder why the zealots find it surprising. The points above represent most of the reasons.

Re:Why it is stealing

[dgatwood]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's probably both per capita and overall. Walk around China and see how easy it is to find pirated copies of movies, software, etc. for a buck or less. Mass piracy runs rampant like you wouldn't believe in many countries. I'm talking about real piracy here, not penny ante Bittorrent downloader piracy.

And although the BSA might predominantly (or exclusively) harass businesses, AFAIK their piracy stats are not business-specific. If they were, their arguments about a pirated copy being a lost sale might actually have some merit.

Re:Why it is stealing

[AmiMoJo]

The BSA only comes out with these numbers to try to scare software vendors into signing up to it. They offer to "investigate" cases of software piracy and recover money for their members (taking a heft chunk for themselves of course).

Their investigations consist of turning up at a company unannounced to do an audit. Since they are just ordinary citizens you can tell them to fuck off and make an appointment next time, but somehow they manage to talk their way in more often than not. They then look for signs of piracy like CD-Rs or unlicensed fonts on printouts. They only care about their member's software mind you, everything else is just a statistic. If they find anything they send you a demand for money and threaten to take you to court, but I don't know how often they follow through with it.

The Performing Rights Society are just as bad. They turned up my friend's big band concert and were trying to get up on stage to see if the music scores they had were photocopied. They were booted out of course, but my point is that this sort of thing is par for the course when it comes to potential copyright infringement.

Bought software is used differently

[NtwoO]

Often people use pirated software for personal use or the occasional tinkering. Many of these will buy a licensed copy if they use it for commercial purposes. These pirated copies contribute to the level of obsequiousness of the software and to what extent a person will advise a licensed copy to his corporation when he has experience with the software on a personal level. Many of these unlicensed copies will be replaced by a lesser capable free software alternative if push comes to shove.

Re:Bought software is used differently

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of these unlicensed copies will be replaced by a lesser capable free software alternative if push comes to shove.

Or, by more capable free software alternatives. Gotta love vim, emacs, git, hg, gcc, bash, etc., etc.

monopolys tiny problem

[Anonymous Coward]

BSA an other groups counts every non MS-software as pirate and assume they would have paid MS tax otherwise.
So, MS loses some tax income, big deal. I would say if you are forced to use MS software, it is only justice to be able to avoid the taxes.

colonialism 2.0

[Jeek Elemental]

First round of colonies gave us resources and free labour to develop our societies and tech.
Second round, the colonies have moved to the IP world which is owned completely by the west due to the advantage from the first round.

While I dont think theres any point backdating morality, things were different during the first looting, theres no excuse for the 2. except might is right.

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Question about the BSA

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, if the BSA sues you, you have to pay for the BSA's legal expenses - whether you are guilty or not.

Is that true? And, if so, how does the BSA get away with that?

Re:Buying a Naked PC? You must be a pirate!

[hedwards]

I'd hate to hear what they think of those of us that take our OS license with us with computer upgrades. I'm still using the same one I got with a purchase back in 2004.

but.. but...

[Bengie]

Some guy in China, who makes $100 per year, pirated our $500 piece of software. We LOST $500!

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trial period

[Anonymous Coward]

half the time a product is so expensive that you need to try it out and most the time the trial version is so locked down that you have to pirate a copy just to get a full understanding of how the software works and see if its worth saveing up and dropping the cash for the newer version that has updates and bug fixes...

That's not necessarily piracy

[BigSlowTarget]

If you make the laws you decide what illegal 'piracy' is. These third world countries are only pirating if it is illegal to copy the software in their country because US copyright and trade laws don't apply in other countries any more than their laws apply here. At some point one of these governments is going to realize that they can simply nationalize software just like they nationalize oil companies and collect all the cash themselves. It is only a desire to maintain good relations with the US that could prevent that.

The Bullshit Spreaders of America strike again...

[SirTreveyan]

What they forget, a little bullshit fertilizes...too much will burn the roots and kill the plant. People see though the FUD these guys try to pawn off as fact. When will they get it through their small deformed heads w/ extra thick skulls to their walnut sized brains that the distribution paradigm they use is flawed. BSA associated companies DEMAND the customer make payment before obtaining a copy of the product, supposedly without ever knowing if the product will do what it is supposed to do, or the customer even knowing if it fit for the customers application of the product. Then on top of that, the customer is unable to return the product once the package seals are broken. Who in their right mind will pay a couple hundred dollars for software they have not tried before and supposedly can not return once they open the package. There are software shops that expect to rake in thousands per package for their product. Frigging insane. And they wonder why people used pirated software!!!

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Licensing revenues

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't licensing revenues go to offshore tax havens like Ireland anyway?

It's gray !

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people do indeed steal it. But unless we're talking games and "entertainment" software, they learn how to use it. And when they get hired, at their new workplace they will insist on using the product they are comfortable with. Think of you needing to become a Catia engineer/designer. I don't know how much that software must cost, probably a lot, many thousands anyway. Would you have the enough coin to buy it ? Maybe not. So you somehow steal it, learn it, practice, and then write on your CV that you know it. Now you have some chance of getting hired.

I am not a Catia user - I do programming for a living. But I have a friend who found job this way. So I agree with it as long as it's helping people. Has my friend any benefit in this ? Of course - now he has a well paying, stable job. Has the industry any benefit in this ? Yes. Now the society is richer by one quality mechanical engineer instead of, say, un unemployed person staying home and watching mid-day sitcoms. Has the Catia producer any benefit ? Probably yes - if there were very few people knowledgeable in their product on the market, their sales would have been so much lower. Now you'll say that my example involves a very expensive and specialized software. True. So what about more common software ? Well... For many years Microsoft was not extremely happy with people stealing their software, but they were not very active in discouraging it either. Do you really think that they were not able to find a way to make stealing more of a hassle for the average users ? To make stealing much more difficult, requiring a lot more knowledge from the users, and thus minimizing the number of pirates ? I am sure that they assumed, wisely, I think, that the people who steal it would probably not buy that software anyway, but by stealing it they become good in using that software, and they will demand it once in the workplace. Accepting some level of pirating is a way to increase your marketshare and brandname as long as the money you're cashing in from the paying customers is paying your day-to-day bills.

Would the people in the developing countries pay for that software ? Most probably not. Try to justify paying, say, 4000$ for Autocad in a country where 3000$ is a good 10 months salary. So from Autodesk's perspective, there is no lost sale here. But by stealing it, these people create a market and, in the future, they will (might) probably buy it, at least in institutional settings. Do you really think that Visual Studio, at 8000$ for the Premium Edition, is an acceptable price in a country where this money could buy you a house ?

What I'm saying is that indeed some companies price their wares out of most markets. And even in the rich countries some of this software is quite expensive. I certainly do not agree with stealing (I am a professional programmer myself, remember !), but stealing is not ALWAYS bad. In some cases, it even creates future opportunities. And in many cases it does not translate in a lost sale. Stealing is morally wrong, for sure, but from an economic standpoint, things are much more shade-of-gray - whereas TFA presents it in a BW oversimplification.

Can anyone?

[RetroRichie]

Can anyone afford Western-style pricing? Without my student discount I am fairly certain I would own no software.

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[account_deleted]

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Delusional people still delusional.

[DarthVain]

News at 11.

What is news, is the fact that governments use this as an excuse to accept bribes from industry and try to justify laws using those ridiculous numbers.

BSA?

[UncleNinja]

What does the Boy Scouts of America have to do with piracy? Sure, we've had some pirate-themed campouts, but still...

Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[unixfan]

Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people. Look at what you are doing, your actions. I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing. Theft. Justifying it with the, often false, idea that it did not do any damage, does not make your action any less so.
It is very true that stealing someones car is quite different from stealing a copy of a computer program. Nevertheless, it is the act of taking something which does not belong to you which makes it theft.

How about someone dropping something on the street. You see it falling to the street and the person is oblivious to the fact and keep on walking. Frankly, if you pick it up and keep it it's also theft. The proper thing to do would be to return it to the owner, or at least make it easier for the person to find it.

All these justifications does not make it less so, it only serves to make you not feel so bad about what you have done/are doing.
It is also rather gutless to hide behind justifications instead of simply owning up to ones actions.
The number of people who feel it's not stealing does not either make it less so.

A much better way of life is to stand up for your actions and set a good example. Make it your goal to always be helpful, soon you start feeling better about yourself as well. I'm sure a number of people consider the above weird and unrealistic. It is however totally workable, and usually brings about a much better feeling about self and others. Being unselfish creates something akin to an accounts receivable in life. When you're in need others often come to your aid, etc.

As I've said in the past, BSA and similar organizations, are in themselves trying to make everyone into thieves by calling everyone so in the hope of increasing income for their members. No doubt they are paid more the more they can stack things in their members favor.

Simply observing how certain groups operate around artists you can see that they themselves are raping the artists under the guise of giving them an "opportunity". Meanwhile the artist who is the one creating the art, and clearly the more valuable one, sees only a few pennies on the dollar. While the lesser person who cannot produce art is taking such an advantage of the situation that the artist has a hard time making a living. Regardless of the effects of those actions, it does not however make the act of taking something which strictly speaking does not belong to you any less of a crime.

Again, this disregard for common sense and decency is not an good opportunity to loose your own respect. Ignore what others are doing and do the right thing for yourself!

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[temcat]

I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing

The air does not belong to me. I breathe, and yet I am not stealing the air. Because in this case it does not belong to anybody, even despite the air being a physical, tangible thing.

As an intanglible thing that ceases to be scarce once first published, information doesn't belong to anybody, either. It cannot be anyone's property, regardless of any fictional legal constructions. There goes all your logic.

In fact, if anything related to IP *is* similar to theft (or, more precisely, robbery), it is copyright itself. Because it infringes on my physical property rights, preventing me from giving a specific shape to my physical property.

Now you can argue that some kinds of theft or robbery, like copyright or taxes, can be beneficial and world is better off with them than without. That is another question altogether and may be a valid argument of ethical nature. But saying that copyright infringement is theft is an intellectual negligence or dishonesty, regardless of your ethical stance.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[h4rr4r]

Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people. Look at what you are doing, your actions.

English Translation: Ignore the only thing that matters so I can keep spewing this crap.

I don't own Ubuntu, nor the linux kernel, I use them all the time. I even downloaded it via bittorrent!

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the air does belong to you. As much as you can breathe. That is the agreement we have made, everyone has the right to breathe.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Leekle2ManE]

Uh oh. I think you made a mistake trying to bring morality into this. Not that I disagree with you. In fact, I do agree with you. But it's becoming more and more apparent that the idea of morals is waxing among today's generations. Especially among those in the online community. The moral compass of the average teen/20-something these days seems to work like Capt. Sparrow's, "Ooh, look. My moral compass points to what I want. So it must be right."

The idea of morality seems to be lumped as something that society deems how we should act, even though morality was in-part brought about by people who stood outside of early societies. And obviously, if society wants us to act a certain way, we must rage and resist and rebel without thought of whether what we're doing is morally right. Because, "Morality? Psh. Keep your moralities to yourself."

You can point your finger and call someone gutless for their baseless and thin justifications, but the simple fact is they don't and won't care. They're not going to take a deep, hard look at themselves in the mirror and question what they're doing. They're not going to make changes to their lives tonight, tomorrow or anytime in any foreseeable future. They feel justified and will continue to do so until they are actually held accountable. Which is not going to happen in an online environment.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[SaroDarksbane]

I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing.

You are completely right. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is stealing, no question about it. Copying, however, isn't taking. The original remains. Copying is copying.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[CastrTroy]

And yet you can be charged for polluting that air. There are laws about maximum emissions that can come from your car. You are free to breath the air, but you are not free to deny others their right to the same clean air.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Anonymous Coward]

"waxing" is the opposite of what you're looking for. It's "waning".

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[unixfan]

Haha, I'm sorry but that is funny!

Reality check! The license is intending for you to take it. When we talk about taking things that don't belong to you it does not include things that you are allowed to take.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[unixfan]

Yup, unfortunately you are soo right. I have however discovered that there are a number of people who are on the fence and can't quite decide what is right and wrong, and when shown the way, they walk the straight and narrow.

It thought of canceling a few times, but thought oh what the hell, it'll be interesting to see the argument against, it being such a heated subject. And who knows maybe one person will do the right thing as a result.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Hydian]

Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people.

But that is the whole point of law.

Nevertheless, it is the act of taking something which does not belong to you which makes it theft.

Nothing was taken though. If I make a copy of something, be it a car, brownie, program, song, or whatever, the original is still right where the owner left it. What, exactly, did I take other than the brownie which was too tasty to pass up? Certainly not the idea as the original creator still has that as well.

You can argue that I deprived the original's owner of potential income that he could have requested either in return for my making a copy or for a copy he had made available himself, but in order for that argument to hold water, the original's owner would have had to make an offer that was acceptable and I would have needed to have had the intention to enter into such a deal. Otherwise, there was no potential income and thus it was not lost. There is no right to all mythical potential income. If I make weather rocks and try to sell them for a billion dollars each, I'm not automatically entitled to that money. If you make a copy of one of my weather rocks, you don't owe me a billion dollars.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Leekle2ManE]

Oops, you're correct. Thanks for the correction.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but that's shifting the significance to a word, away from what is actually occurring. It is theft unless you have the right to do so. Trying to use different words to sort of find a loop hole is silly.
Is it OK, through law or agreement with owner, for you to take it?

You find a diamond on the street. Does it belong to you? Did you drop it? I would go out on a limb and say it probably belongs to someone who's now very distraught over not being able to find it. You think Wow, I found a diamond! Keeping it is very obviously not right, and if caught hanging on to it could easily result in a judgment against you.

That piece of code that you found in someone's server (web or otherwise) does probably not belong to you either. Unless it's there for you to take thanks to maybe a GPL license, it is not OK for you to take. That simple. Making a copy is taking something which is not yours. Really a simple concept but hard if you have an ethics blind spot.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[temcat]

This is equivalent to saying that for the purposes of breathing, the air does not belong to anybody.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you have heard of intellectual property. Amongst others applies to computer code.
No, the point of the law is to try to keep people honest. Which one can argue has various level of success.

Some minority of people feel they cannot legally obtain things which they like to have. They are usually surrounded with people who feel the same way, which makes it seem more OK to do wrong things.

Rather than seeing the simplicity of the action of obtaining something which is not yours, you come up with silly notions about how it's a copy, and it did not hurt anyone, and so on.

I do agree that mythical income lost does not mean that if people stopped copying that would all of a sudden materialize improving sales someplace. It's just as imaginary as the above arguments.

I'm guessing that by weather rocks you mean some stones that supposedly alters the weather. Making the argument that some ordinary stone does not mean you have the rights to all rocks? Which I would agree with. Unless of course, you did manufacture something unique in which case you did own the intellectual property and had the rights to the billions of dollars you could get from selling them.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[spire3661]

There is the question of the law itself, which has been twisted HEAVILY in favor of the copyright side of the BARGAIN. Copyright holders have no RIGHT to copyright extension, it was granted through corruption and money changing hands. It is in no way a benefit to promote the arts and sciences to give perpetual copyright. I find nothing wrong with the outright civil disobedience of copyright law until balance is restored. You can call that a rationalization if you want. I call it not being personally shackled by laws that were bought and paid for and not made for the benefit of mankind.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Hatta]

Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people

Actions are only right or wrong depending on how they affect people. It's not a mistake, it's the only rational way to build a moral system.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes. They call it the Mickey Mouse law. Extended by congress like crazy because of being afraid of competition. Ruined copyright and competition all over the world as a result. (Most of the world looking at us.)

How are you going to fight the shackles?

By breaking the law because it suits you? There are many legal ways of doing it. And I'm not talking about following the law as much as following integrity. That inherent sense of right and wrong which sane people possess, and tells you if what you are doing is actually OK. (Leaving the neurotic and psychotic out of the conversation.)

But two wrongs does not a right make.

Fortunately we don't live in some countries where you will be thrown in a hole on an arbitrary, your wife stoned, hands cut off and so on, because of some tyrant. On the other hand unless you have money to lobby the government, your options are things such as putting up blogs, organizing people for your cause and then because of quantity be able to see some politician who thinks it's a worthy cause (will give him what he wants) who can then in turn lobby congress.

Right now people play into the hands of bad organizations such as BSA, MPAA etc. Because acting as a vigilante does not win most of people over to your cause. Quite the opposite. It is entirely a matter of perception, how you are seen by the masses and the government.

Saying things such as copying is not stealing gives these clowns fodder for their (criminal) arguments. It tells everyone that these people are thieves and should be shot at dawn.

Then the rest of the people who are too busy to take a stand will sit idly by while you are brought to the gallows. Or in this case they successfully argue why they should have all the power they "need" to wipe out anyone's computer found to use bitorrent and so on.

I bet you Slashdot politics are used as argument/evidence of how laws needs to be enacted to stop the thievery.

unixfan

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[SaroDarksbane]

away from what is actually occurring

Copying is exactly what is occurring when you copy a movie. Using the words "piracy", "stealing", or "taking" with respect to copyright infringement is exactly what is not occurring.

Is it OK, through law

Illegal copying is illegal. That doesn't change the fact that it is copying, and not piracy, theft, rape, murder, or one of any thousand other, separate crimes.

You find a diamond on the street.

Still not the same as copying, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. It's a complete non-sequitur. You might as well say that illegal copying is murder, because if you saw a homeless guy on the street and shot him in the head, that would be bad. Okay, but what does one have to do with the other?

That piece of code that you found in someone's server (web or otherwise) does probably not belong to you either.

Here you assume that someone can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive in the first place. If I hack into someone's server and copy their code, I've trespassed on their very real property (the server). If I bittorrent a movie, however, both me and the multitude of people I received pieces of the file from have agreed to share that configuration of bits, and no trespass has occurred; I've taken nothing from anyone.

Really a simple concept but hard if you have an ethics blind spot.

I find it a very simple concept from my end too, but I don't go around accusing everyone who disagrees with me as being amoral. Making a rational argument is much more effective in the end than demonizing your opponents, even if it's harder.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[unixfan]

Hehe, this is funny. You can also be charged with stealing, even if all you did was make a new copy.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[enderjsv]

"As an intangible thing that ceases to be scarce once first published, information doesn't belong to anybody, either. It cannot be anyone's property, regardless of any fictional legal constructions."

Sure it can. In the same way that physical property can. I mean, there's no real tangible reason a person should be able to own a piece of land. There's no natural construct keeping me from occupying someone's summer home in the winter. After all, as you said yourself, there's no physical loss in me doing so. The house will still be there for them in the summer, right? The only construct present to prevent me from doing that is the one created by our society. If a squirrel drops an acorn in the forest and another squirrel scoops it up, there's no court of law to determine who the rightful owner of the acorn is. But in human society, there is. Why? Because we recognize the efficiency and benefit of such a system.

The same could be said of intellectual property. It exists in the same manner, as a construct of our society, because in general our society agrees people who create intellectually valuable ideas deserve to be compensated for them, both to reward and to motivate. Is the system perfect? Doubtful. But I don't think "IP isn't real" is really a constructive argument. Unless you're willing to extend that logic to ALL societal constructs that don't exist naturally, then you might want to think of a different argument.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[temcat]

There's no natural construct keeping me from occupying someone's summer home in the winter. After all, as you said yourself, there's no physical loss in me doing so.

There is a natural construct keeping you from simultaneously possessing the same tangible thing with someone else. If I take a tangible thing from you, you no longer have it. That holds for squirrels and acorns, too.

Now who exactly is the rightful owner of a specific tangible thing, is another question that is offtopic here. But the point is that it is ownable in that at least its possession is necessarily exclusive. Intangibles are not. Yes you can have contracts about intangible things, even contracts that remind copyright/patents/etc. rather closely in effect, but you have to specifically enter them. No, legislation is not a contract. And even then, you don't normally call breach of contract "theft".

Of course, nothing prevents the goverment (I don't buy that "social agreement" bullshit) from creating an artificial monopoly for, say, winking, and calling a wink someone's property. And then I guess if I wink without being granted this monopoly, you would call me a thief, too. But don't be surprised if people don't subscribe this ridiculous notion and continue to act as if it didn't exist (to the extent they can avoid being caught). Because it really isn't property for the natural reasons outlined above.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[Kelsen]

Entirely correct. The people who want something of value (and make no mistake, it is the 'value' that makes it stealing) for nothing are dishonest, in their lives and with themselves.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[enderjsv]

You don't buy that "social agreement" bullshit? So, what then, you live in a cabin in the woods all by your lonesome? If not, then you really DO buy it, cause it drives our lives. Kill someone? Go to jail. Grow up a child in America? Go to school. Destroy someone's property? Get sued and be forced to compensate. These are all social contracts enforced by people upon people.

You chose winking to illustrate how absurd the concept of ownership can be, as an analogy for copy right infringement. I agree, the concept of owning winking seems fairly ludicrous to me. But then, the concept of owning land probably seemed ludicrous at one time. The concept of owning airwaves probably seemed ludicrous at one time. The thought that I can be held liable for mere words might seem ludicrous, until you examine the reasons we've made it so. But we function as a society, and we set up social constructs to assure the prosperity and organization of that society. You can claim all you want that copy right infringement is a false institution. Technically, you'd be right. But that claim is meaningless given that so many other organization you partake of could be satisfied by the same reasoning. I doubt if someone murdered your wife you'd be comfortable with the claim that "crime and punishment is a false, man-made institution."

As for the specific point you made concerning the actual possession of an item, how does that work with land? Why is it that we allow a businessman to own a coal mine if he's not actually in the mine digging out coal? And what about my specific example concerning your summer home. Would you be fine letting others into your house without your consent during the winter? If you're not using it, then you've not lost possession, right?

But in truth, these examples are unnecessary. We've decided, as a society, that ideas can be owned. It's not a recent idea, either. It's easy to demonstrate historically. As a societal construct, it holds as much legitimacy as any other institution enforced only through human action. Perhaps owning a wink is a ludicrous idea. I'll concede to that point. But should owning a wink ever become necessary for the growth or well-being of society, then you can bet I'll be on board with the human construct built to enforce it. Hopefully, it'll never come to that. *wink

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[temcat]

You bring up many points that might be interesting to discuss but increasingly offtopic.

My initial point is that regardless of whether you think of copyright as right or wrong, copyright infringement is not theft because a) intangible things cannot possibly be stolen for reasons described above, and b) even with tangible things, there are cases when I can take something that doesn't belong to me and yet not commit theft.

Land that you cite as one example is perfectly ownable as a tangible thing. The same land spot cannot be used by me for building a house and by you for growing corn at the same time. In your other example with a summer house you conveniently omit the crucial point of simultaneousness, not to mention wear and tear that may result from other people using the house.

To sum up, it is OK to think that copyright is good and copyright infringement is bad. While my opinion on that topic is complex, this is irrelevant here. What I am for is calling things their proper names. If copyright infringement is so bad on its own, one doesn't have to call it with a name of another bad thing (which has had a very specific and different meaning from the time immemorial). However, if one does feel the need to do that, it raises the suspicion that one tries to muddy the waters by injecting an emotional component in the rational discussion.

Regarding the whole "social agreement" thing, I will only make the following remark without the intent to discuss it any further at this time. Agreement, if this word is to have any meaning, is not the same as giving in to coercion and accepting things as they are. Otherwise even the most oppressive and tyrannic regime would have to be called a result of some "social agreement". I haven't entered any agreements of the sort and neither have you.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[enderjsv]

See, now we're just getting into semantics. If the discussion really should be whether or not copyright infringement is bad, why get hung up on definitions. I don't understand why people who pirate do this. They complain about the word steal, even though "stealing and idea" is a concept that's been around for a very long time. They complain about "pirate", even though pirate is merely a simple term we've created recently as it's easier than saying "downloaded software off the internet without paying for it." I suppose perhaps they complain because of the negative connotations applied to both terms, but I think that's a bit ridiculous. The fact is, such negative connotation would eventually come to any term you wanted to use, including copyright infringement. I could call it "puppy hugging" and eventually it'd still garner a negative connotation. "Gay" once meant "happy", right?

Basically, I think you're definition of the word "steal" is more narrow than it has historically been. As I said, stealing an idea is a concept that came around long before the internet. And my post was not offtopic at all. It was attempt to explain to you how human created social constructs can have legitimacy. "Thought as property" is a human created social construct. The use of property without consent is theft, regardless of it's tangibility. This is how it's defined. But again, it's really just semantics. If you want to call it "puppy hugging" to make yourself feel better, than so be it.

Re:Look at your own actions and stop justifying

[temcat]

Yes, we're talking about semantics, and not just now, but from the very start. That's because semantics actually matters. Without semantics, you can't tell good from bad, because ethics necessarily relies on it.

Whoever had first coined the term "steal an idea", was guilty of sloppy thinking (which, sadly, is rather common in the society, though not universal) and produced a misnomer. The reason is not only that you cannot really "steal" an idea the way it can be done with a tangible thing. It's also that stealing is bad exactly because it deprives somebody of the thing for the time that it's stolen - something that just doesn't happen with ideas. And that if there is something closer to real, physical theft or robbery, it's the prohibition to "steal" ideas. So, in spite of the semantics here being topsy-turvy, one sneaks in the bad emotional connotations associated with real theft, and voila - copying someone else's idea suddenly appears like something bad. Which in fact it may or may not be, but even if it is, it must be for entirely different reasons than with physical theft.

And yet we contantly see the explanations to the effect that copyright infringement is bad because it is theft. If we analyse the semantics, we can see that this is not an explanation at all, just an attempt to substitute a rational argument with an emotional one. Your example of "puppy hugging" is actually a very good one and works both ways. Just as simply calling copyright infringement "puppy hugging" doesn't make it good, calling it "theft" doesn't make it bad. One needs to employ some other type of argumentation to justify one's ethical stance on copyright.

Close to Somalia's GNP?

[gwolf]

Given that most of the world's piracy occurs in the Gulf of Aden, off the Somalian shore, I am sure this news item means that poor and disorganized country is heading towards recovery. I am very happy for it. However, I fail to see what is the relation between the Business Software Alliance and any guild of vessel captains.

Oh, you mean "illegal copying"? Then why did you say "piracy"?

We can argue endlessly on how that number is false, misleading, and so on (e.g. they usually count all non-legally-paid licenses as a loss for 100% of the license value – While in very few cases would the license in question be paid at all if anti-copying schemes worked correctly). However, piracy should just not be confused with illegal copying.

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BSA?

[Corson]

I'm sorry, BSA stands for... BS Association?

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Put it on your student loan

[tepples]

It's not unusual for companies to ask hundreds of dollars for the student version.

Then get a loan for that amount, just as one gets a loan for the rest of one's post-secondary education.

Re:Put it on your student loan

[MeateaW]

The australian government wont give me a loan for that.

Oh wait, you are assuming everyone lives in the retarded american system where you have to get an actual loan rather than government assistance (with a promise that you'll pay it back if you earn enough, and if you don't you get a free education - basically).

America is so broken, don't assume everywhere else is too.

3ds Max-only shops are part of the problem

[tepples]

Students can get student discounts

So what should someone who wants to learn the software after having graduated do? Go back for a master's degree?

But more importantly - every time somebody downloads 3ds Max "to play with", that means they may -not- be downloading, for example, Blender to play with.

I use Blender. But companies that standardize on Autodesk products and whose human resource departments proceed to ignore candidates' Blender experience when evaluating their portfolios are part of the problem.

Piracy Helps the Economy!

[Anonymous Coward]

The money that I've saved by trying pirated software in the past (I always bought it if I ended up using it. I use Linux, now.) was spent on other things. I therefore helped boost the economy in other sectors, just not the software industry.

BSA are extortionists!

[Anonymous Coward]

The BSA isn't interested in justice, or righting wrongs, all they want to do is generate revenue and notoriety by extorting individuals and businesses into paying their so called "Fines" which are higher if the BSA agrees not to blab about in ways that imply guilt when there is no proof of it.

They sent the company I work for one of their blanket letters they send to everyone or every business in the area making false accusations and threats. They said we were pirating Microsoft Office 97 but we had the licenses I've seen them, but because we didn't have all the receipts from that many years ago - who does? we are presumed guilty of a crime that never took place.

It's common practice in accounting to not keep receipts over seven years or so b/c the tax liability doesn't go back that far. The BSA knows this, and are sending blanket letters to companies and individuals demanding receipts and through threats and intimidation, to get some poor fish on the hook!

I hope they get their asses sued off, but that's not going to happen with the level of power and backing from large corporations that stand to profit from their despicable behavior.

Business Software Alliance

[Anonymous Coward]

BSA - Started in 1911 in the US has been working with kids and usually not doing to bad a job at it.

And these guys decide they like the acronym.

I have no problem with software piracy for that simple reason!

Windows 98 and Windows 2000 no longer get updates

[tepples]

I'd hate to hear what they think of those of us that take our OS license with us with computer upgrades.

They think you're using your computer insecurely. If you permanently transfer your Windows license to each new PC every two years, it gets two years closer to the announced end of security updates for that version of Windows.

SCADA etc

[SharpFang]

So, if a two classes of 30 students each install each a pirated copy of a SCADA system, estimate sales value $250,000 each, to make their final work at the dorms/home and not in a computer lab, and without "student version" nag, that means the industry has lost $15mln to that school year alone?

Because surely the students would definitely buy the program if they could not pirate it.

U.S. Patent 5,893,120

[tepples]

some [160 PCs] bought with no OS license and installed with Debian

Each installation of Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, or Fedora can be counted as an infringement because Linux violates U.S. Patent 5,893,120 and foreign counterparts.

Thats nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA spent 3 Trillion on invisible free healthcare. Top That!

Interesting argument, but...

[unixfan]

I find the arguments interesting, Speed kills and Guns kills. Neither is actually true. Not that I'm promoting speeding. But it is usually incompetence, poor responsibility and stupidity that kills. Governments, having problems with telling the difference, simply apply a simply rule that applies to idiots and professionals alike.

Of course the fact of him speeding (or not) has nothing to do with Your actions. Or are you arguing that since others are doing something that it's all of a sudden OK?

Neither can we.

[StikyPad]

the main reason users in developing countries resort to piracy is because they can't afford Western-style pricing.

Shit, most westerners can't afford Western-style pricing. That said, the market has already factored piracy into its pricing, otherwise the major software houses would have been out of business long ago. Of course, there are (or have historically been) legitimate means to get steep discounts on software, including buying used software or buying wholesale/OEM copies, but the industry seems bound and determined to convert those paying customers to pirates as well.

Spent elsewhere

[gochomoe]

So if we go by what the BSA says then piracy helps the economy by freeing up money to be spent in other areas. Not spending $3435734594 on Photoshop means I can spend more money in my local stores thus aiding my cities economic growth. So the BSA is trying to "steal" money from other companies who provide more concrete services! I believe they should be prosecuted for this. Plus I've always loved how Adobe has been pirated into mainstream speech. You dont say a photo was manipulated digitally, you say it was Photoshopped. Adobe's business plan has always been to do the bare minumum to fight piracy so as to gain the dominant market share because everyone learns to edit media using their stuff, therefore it becomes the first thing a digital artist buys once they go pro.

BSA

[stringman520]

Don't take them seriously, everyone knows that they stand for Bull $hit Artist.

Why dont they just sue The Pirate Bay for $60 B?

[Anonymous Coward]

$60 Billion - $58.8 Billion = Profit! ..and TPB pay the Legal Costs, RESULT!

The trick is more subtle than that

[Anonymous Coward]

They ask Microsoft licensees how much software they buy. They then extrapolate that to every user, then they estimate the losses.

So every open source software user is counted as a pirate, users who don't upgrade aren't licensees so they're counted too, users of non BSA members are counted.

When this was pointed out to them they added a token slice based on the amount of open source the Microsoft licensees use, which is of course a major underestimate.

BSA pass this nonsense off every year as a report, and every year it's the same lies.

BSA Members: Apple, Microsoft

[npsimons]

Don't forget, Apple and Microsoft are members of the BSA. As a side note, Google is not a member of the BSA.

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Re:Windows 98 and Windows 2000 no longer get updat

[hedwards]

It's XP, but yes, with 98 and 2k, those are definitely not safe to be using at this point. Not that 98 was ever particularly secure.

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Western style pricing?

[slapout]

What is "Western style pricing"? If something costs X to make, don't I have to sell it for more than X to make a profit? Doesn't that apply everywhere?

Re:Western style pricing?

[hibiki_r]

We are talking software here. Software replication costs are minimal, so the real cost is in making the first copy. So, as far as profit goes, it's roughly equivalent to sell a program to one person for a million dollars than it is to sell it to a million people for a dollar. So the question is, what is the price point that will bring the most profit?

If you want to sell your app to, say, large engineering firms in the US, you'll sell your app if you price it so that the time saved by having the engineers use your app more than offsets your licensing costs. If you try the same price in India, it'll probably not fly, because the cost of an engineering hour there is lower. Therefore, your app will either not get bought at all, or will be pirated.

Things get even more complicated when we deal with more segmented markets: Maybe an app is woruth $10K a year for one firm, but only $6K to another, and finally only $2K to yet another. Price it at $6K, and you get $12K. Price it at $10K, and you only get $10. at $2K, you make only $6K. In this situation your optimal price point is obviously $6K, but no amount of IP enforcement will make the company valuing at $2K buy it. They could pirate it, or not use it, but they'd never buy it.

So often we see companies that try to do price discrimination through regions, selling the same thing at very different prices in different markets, which is why licenses are often cheaper in East Asia than they are in the US, for the exact same digital product.

Re:Western style pricing?

[RadiantPhoenix]

In the western world, corporations that "sell" software typically do so for far, far more than the marginal cost of $0.

Total Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The BSA always publishes the same lies, every year.
Does anyone actually believe them.

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um...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just what they track. What about the legal-turned-illegal shared software and re-copied wares that does not take place on the internet? eh? Just remember the Mentor: You may stop one individual, but you can't stop us all. After all, we're all alike.

Three years left

[tepples]

It's XP

I'm almost certain that the day after Microsoft ends extended support for Windows XP, criminals on the Internet will release their remaining zero days to the wild. But you should be safe for almost three more years according to Microsoft's product lifecycle chart. You can spend that time evaluating whether to switch to Windows 7 or switch to GNU/Linux.

BS if anytime you wanna hear it

[hesaigo999ca]

This is complete BS to me.
How they calculate it does not take into consideration that anything pirated does not apply to the intended demographics....so no...just because i downloaded the Notebook for my GF to watch, does it mean I would actually have bought it if there was no piracy happening. In the end, the way they do the books (such as a story posted here in the past about Harry Potter 6) being a total bankruptcy, because they played with the books, should have given the courts a clue as to how they manipulate the data in their favor. If after all this we still think to look at their "numbers" as being legit, we are seriously mental.

Open Source software is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, let me explain. Hopefully before you hate me. I live in China and the piracy problem is enormous here. Most universities run their entire computer system on a single ghost copy of windows XP bought for 3 dollars and created by Russian hackers. Ditto MS Office Suite, (esp 2003, v. popular still) ditto Adobe CS, ditto this, ditto that. Everything you have in your computer they have as well. But they didn't pay diddly for it.

The reason, as admitted by Bill Gates in the late nineties was the decision to allow piracy in Asia to get Asian people "hooked" on Windows products. They succeeded, but they succeeded too well because Mr G, no matter how smart he might be about western consumers don't know diddly about Chinese and Asian people. What was it he missed?

In Asian cultures there is still (in spite of the massive changes in the 60s and 70s) a strong cultural imperative that the answers that served your ancestors best serve you best. Something truly new CAN take hold and be accepted, but it has to have no corollary in the past. Mobile phones and Instant Messaging are the best examples of this. Windows 7 is new, it is not the trusted and ancestral windows XP profession SP3 that everyone and their fathers use. Some people here have taken Win7 off their computers and installed winxp again because it is what is accepted, it is (i'm going to make a word joke, prepare yourself) canonical.

If, once MS stops supporting Winxp, an enterprising open source advocate steps in and offers a version of ANY open source distro that mimics winxp with very similar icons and program behaviors with a multi-language Asian GUI using all open source then they can make deals with the Asian manufacturers here to provide the OS for a very cheap price and go to the races on it. Safety, security, speed, stability and the safe EFing green knoll desktop that says "computer" to Chinese and other Asian people. You could do it with gnome 2.0, or even X or LX, and you would change the landscape. (Suggestion: make your company "all Chinese or whatever country you target" and headquarter there with requisite members of the power elite in important money handling roles)

Sell this to manufacturers for (@$8.00) and to anyone else for (@$10.00) and include a repository system that is "chinese (or other asian country-- like Thai, or Burmese or whatever so that the language thing stays "pure") only" with lots of free apps and a few paid apps for things that you had to create a language pack for, but all controlled in the normal linux way: but you use the browser to access them, or rather the package manager is a function of the browser and has appropriate web-page looks with .... chinese /asian stuff, you know what I mean. (ex: )

Why would this work? For the same reason that my students copy and paste every goddamn thing they are supposed to be paraphrasing and summarizing. It is the traditional Asian way to show
1) respect to the knowledge of your ancestors
2) that you respect your reader/user (because, in the case of a reader anyway, if they are as well educated as you then the readers will also have read the article that is being used for the information and so the students do not need to give attribution, in fact giving attribution is insulting you, the reader.)

You see? Using the framework of that fugly windows XP desktop and its antediluvian icons is honoring the user and the ancestors who also used it. Of course there is no need to provide any compensation to MS because that is NOT a part of tradition.

Does this help explain why the Chinese manufacturers of the notorious "Green Dam" software blatantly ripped of their net nanny software from an American company and did not pay squat for it? They were honoring the makers you see?