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BSA Claims Half of PC Users Are Pirates
judgecorp writes "Despite continued pressure on business users to buy legitimate software, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) reports that the campaign seems to be failing. Well over half (57%) of users surveyed in a global survey admit to using pirated software. That's a big increase from the same survey last year — when 43% admitted to using pirated software. The BSA surveyed 15,000 people in 33 countries."
Only half?
Doesn't that indicate that perhaps a different approach is required? This sue-happy, mafia-style campaign isn't working so perhaps that's not the right way to go about it. I don't have the solution but clearly neither do they.
Obviously...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Not all of the 43%. Some of us have learned from the Ernie Ball story and moved off closed source entirely.
The truth shall set you free!
"UK is firmly below the global average, with just 27 percent of computer users admitting they have acquired software illegally last year. This translates into an approximate £1.2 billion loss by the software industry." - "People who use software without paying for it" != "People who would pay for it if they couldn't get it for free". Only a group like the BSA (and it can't be coincidental that their acronym so nicely fits with BullShitArtists) would use stats like that.
You can bet that BSA surveys are rigged to generate the highest numbers possible. After all, if "piracy" was declining they couldn't really insists that all of the draconian laws and penalties were needed.
Cops figured this out decades ago - no matter that crime stats have been falling for ten years, somehow the police always need more people, more equipment, and tougher laws.
Any survey by the BSA - or any group with a vested interest - is automatically suspect.
Three Squirrels
is it really a crime?
This country is, at least in theory, a democracy. If more people break that law than voted for the current president, doesn't that indicate that the majority of people don't believe that piracy is "bad"?
I feel like there should be some eloquent Latin quote for this... Ubi omnes sontes, nemo sontes? Did I get that right?
I haven't needed to pirate anything in years, everything has a free and good-enough equivalent now. What does anyone pirate today?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
C'mon! Let's get to 100% PEOPLE!
That'll be just for the attitude of those bastards. ;-)
Actually BSA thinks that all the PC users are pirates - but they are scared that if they tell the truth as it is, they'll look like loons
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Isn't that right. If the majority of the population breaks the law, there is a problem with the law.
Not fully. I fully respect that companies need a way to make profit.
This is not a problem with the law, its often a problem with the companies. Asking way too much for certain products or having a horrible distribution scheme. Say about bittorrent what you wish, but if I actually look for some software, I find it, usually having to only look for 1 site. And it doesn't annoy the fuck out of me during installation.
Because Apple are usually smart enough to realise that serial numbers and drm schemes only cause inconvenience to paying customers...
So how does that explain the DRM in Final Cut Pro X which uses the iTunes receipt in the app folder to validate the install? The definitely have DRM in there.
Not fully. I fully respect that companies need a way to make profit.
Why? Profit is a means, not an end. If the profit motive isn't serving man in some area, then it need not be there.
You might as well say, "I fully respect that worshippers need a gold-plated Church in every town."
But this is not a belief it is a factual thing. What people believe is one thing, but what they do en masse that's the real deal. Now in this case, if more than 50 percent of the people do something and what they do is harmless (there's no such thing as right to profit making from old and bad business practices - though recently it seems that the banks and the publisher companies are entitled to it). The law must recognize the reality: if it fails to do that, it will be by and large ignored. You see, there were not so long ago (or perhaps there still are) laws against oral and gay sex in some states. Such a backward an irrelevant laws must be overturned. A lobby group should not get bigger powers than the majority of the involved population.
What the majority believes may be wrong some times.
This is a well-known let's say 'urban legend', refuted several times throughout history but which keeps coming back as a way to stress just how dark the Dark Ages were or to make a Mayan discovery look more spectacular. Educated people over the millenia have always known that Earth is round, and belief otherwise is just that - a dogma imposed by some religions, methinks as a simple yet powerful way to describe how precious and rare life as we know is. See the "Myth of a flat Earth" page references for some amusement.
There will also always be nutcases that deny common sense and science, some of them might even go as far as to negate Darwinism in American schools, but I do hold hope that humanity can work around those.
Copyright Infringement is a crime (or at least an infraction) that you can commit in the privacy of your own home.
Just like interracial sex. If it harms no one, you do it in the privacy of your home, why should it be a crime?