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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."
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.
Good to see the old Broken Window Fallacy is still alive and well.
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.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
-Snorbert, somewhere in the antipodes
>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
I'll just copy some illegal software a million times and I will be known as the worst thief on the planet!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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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.
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.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
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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.
No he would say, "he copied my paper!" That is the correct word, because it is accurate.
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!
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.
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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.
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.
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.