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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.
The Boy Scouts of America have been using that TLA for a lot longer than the Business Software Alliance has existed. The former should sue the latter for damaging the reputation of their acronym.
... are liars.
Obviously...
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Clearly, the solution is to incarcerate 60% of the population, or at least monitor all their activities, North Korea style.
Do you know a company using illegal software? Report it now and you could be rewarded with cash!
What are you waiting for, click on the link below, now!!!
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I use a Mac!
#DeleteChrome
Over 100% of users will be pirates within just four years.
Things will be so much better when that happens. The authorities can then just arrest anyone they don't like and have a guaranteed conviction!
Do you know what the article doesn't tell you?
How the question was phrased, which makes a helluva lot of difference in the results of any poll.
"Tell me, sir, do you still pirate software?"
"Well... uh... no."
"So you admit that you USED to pirate software?"
"Well... no."
"So you admit you pirate software now, but didn't used to?"
"Well... uh..."
"So how often do you beat your wife?"
"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.
Gonna need bigger prisons.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
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
Something tells me they didn't even probe further, but even if they did they wouldn't have reported this part of the data. I bet that a significant portion of the 57% of "admitted pirates" are also legitimate customers who are using pirated software to bypass the annoyances (activation, DRM) that generally comes from high-profile commercial software.
FC Closer
As usual when someone with an agenda throws statistics at you, you can rest assured that they've manipulated them in such a way to achieve their own goals. In this case, it's rather easy to see what they are doing. Worldwide? When I was in Africa 2 years ago, the hotel I stayed in had a computer in the community room. Windows Genuine Advantage warnings kept popping up. I fixed that for them... much to the bemusement of the Microsoft employee that was staying their with us. After traveling to several other locations we found that, at least to our limited exposure, ALL the software on EVERY computer was pirated. The Microsoft guy was appalled. I asked him where he expected these people to buy his software? Shipping to that part of africa was somewhere in the neighborhood of $500... There were no walmarts, or any sort of software vendors. The fastest data connection I came across was at a coffee shop at it was 56k. So you can be fairly certain that the entire continent of Africa's piracy rate is well above 99% Take the population of Africa... oh and China... and India... are you starting to get the picture? Did their poll ask people if it were possible for them to buy the software they needed in the first place? I doubt it.
Don't pretty much all computer users, especially those of the geeky variety, pirate software when they're kids and have little to no money to buy it?
I sure as hell did! Not because I wanted to "stick it to the man", but because I had no other way of getting software. I was a kid, I had no cash, no income. The software publishers lost nothing on me because had I not been able to pirate, I wouldn't have been able to buy the software anyway.
Now as an adult, I spend quite a bit of money on software and media. The only time I'll still download something questionable is when I cannot obtain it legally otherwise.
So surveying people asking if they've ever pirated software is going to be a naturally inflated number, because many of us did when we were kids.
It's 57% of *users* (not population.)
The remaining 43% could be using FOSS, or FOSS users weren't counted.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
57& is a majority, so it's no longer a crime since the majority does it and think it's OK. The BSA can close its doors and die now...
C'mon! Let's get to 100% PEOPLE!
That'll be just for the attitude of those bastards. ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The Bullshit Statistics Association reports that not only to 57% of PC users pirate software, but that software piracy rate among Somali pirates is actually lower than average.
"This epidemic of out-pirating the pirates causes us great concern," said BSA's chairman Slammem N. Jale. "But it's not too late. We have examples of rehabilitated pirates."
"Aaaarggh!", roared Cap'n Bluebeard. "Me mateys and I used ta blow each other ta smithereens with an illegal copy of Mine Sweeper. But we've seen the light and sent our booty ta Microsoft, aargh. What good does gold do ya when yer conscience weight upon ya like a two-ton anchor?"
Jale concludes: "Send us all your money, and you can sleep easy."
When the majority of people break a law, it's the law that's wrong. Laws exist to support and further societal norms. When the norm is illegal, the law needs to be corrected.
Note that I'm not saying copyright should be eliminated, or that it has no value. Just that the present implementation is wrong.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
does not use serial numbers or any sort of DRM to begin with.
Most of my tools use registration keys.
SecureCRT, FinalCut Studio, MS-Office, TextMate, IntelliJ, etc... It's a long list.
Pull my finger for my public key.
So where's the American Pirate Party?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Of course, there are lies, damn lies and statistics like these. But there is some truth to this figure -- especially in terms of expensive applications such as Photoshop. People who wouldn't pirate _anything_ else _will_ pirate Photoshop or Microsoft Office because they can't justify the expense until they establish the demand.
Of course, once they establish the demand, since they already have the software, it's 'easy' for them to 'forget' to buy a paid copy.
Happily, Adobe has seen the light and offers trialware versions of its stuff -- if more companies did the same, had reduced prices for trialware users, and so-forth, that 50-odd percent figure would likely drop dramatically.
The only stuff I possess which isn't pirated, is free software...
Fuck copyright.
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.
...is nobody's crime.
Case in point...
I recently purchased a new Asus laptop with Windows 7 pre-installed. I've nothing against Windows 7 but currently it does nothing for me that Windows XP won't and I therefore see no point in learning a new OS that, in every other respect, is just change for change's sake in the way that everything has been moved around and renamed by Microsoft.
I have a shop bought copy of XP but discovered that despite XP still being supported, Asus doesn't have drivers for all of the hardware in the laptop for XP. So in this case I resigned myself to keeping Windows 7 on the laptop.
I'm mainly a Linux guy and wanted to partition the laptop to dual boot Gentoo Linux. I backed up the Asus Windows installation partitions and then trashed the hard drive with the partitions that I wanted. But when I re-installed Windows 7 from the back-up, it trashed my partition structure and put itself back on exactly as it was when I bought it.
A friend of mine is an MSDN subscriber and gave me an ISO of Windows 7 Home Premium, exactly as on the laptop originally. So I partitioned the drive as I wanted it and installed from the Windows 7 installation DVD I had made from the ISO. When it came to putting in the W7 License Key, I copied in the one from the base of laptop, but when it finished installing W7 it told me the License Key was invalid.
I read in a magazine article that an ISO image of W7 contains all W7 versions and you can prompt W7 to ask you what version of W7 to install by removing a config file from the ISO image and reburning to DVD.
So I repeated the installation and, sure enough, I got asked which version to install - again, I chose W7 Home Premium as the laptop had come with. But once again it rejected my license key.
Having done a few searches on Google (I'm reasonably competent with Windows but more Linux orientated), I discover that I have only an OEM license for Windows 7, which basically means I am piece of shit on the bottom of Steve Ballmer's hand-made shoes and am therefore not worthy enough to install the version of Windows 7 I legally have a license to use from an installation DVD that has that version on it.
At that point in time, I could have got a W7 license key from the Internet, or maybe scrounged one from my MSDN-subscribing friend but I'm not into using pirated software any more, for the simple fact that when the time I stopped using pirated software about 5 years ago, I have never had a virus or piece of malware on Windows XP since.
As of now, I've given up with W7 on the laptop, I actually wish I'd not accepted the Microsoft T&Cs and got a refund because it's of no use to me - instead the laptop is now a Linux-only PC and I shall put my legitimate copy of XP on as a VirtualBox VM.
I do wonder if I have a case under "Fair Usage" with UK Trading Standards in this instance since it does not strike me as unreasonable to want to partition my hard drive the way I want to and to then install the provided W7 installation files onto that partition structure so I could build a dual boot.
Maybe the BSA would be interested in taking the case up as someone who, despite being treated like shit by a software company, has not chosen to pirate software as an easy solution to the problem of getting fair usage?
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
You described a case when free software competes with commercial software. But imagine following scenario:
* There is an entrenched piece of software by company A used by most people that costs 700$.
* There is a startup company B producing similar thing that costs 50$.
Now in case you pirate the software produced by company A, that's not a lost sale for company A. That's more a lost sale for company B.This kind of behaviour will lead to demise of company B and company A will become a monopoly. Add to this network effects and zero distribution costs and file format lock-in etc- they will only speed things up.
What I want to say is that software market in general is easily dominated by big established companies. It's almost impossible to compete with established players, even if you sell a similar/better product for less. And piracy is one of the things responsible for that.
Now markets where you need to offer support or adaptation/localization of software (enterprise markets) are somewhat different. And that's where Linux shines.
--Coder
What would the figure be if they removed all the people who admit to using Linux etc. I think that the BSA and fellow criminals consider FOSS to be theft and "piracy".
Perhaps the numbers are 7% of people actually use non-free software without paying for it and 50% of people do not use any Free software.
The number of people, even those running Windows, who are not using any open source software is shrinking all the time. I have come accross the most un-technical people using GIMP or Open Office.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
"A friend of mine is an MSDN subscriber and gave me an ISO of Windows 7 Home Premium, exactly as on the laptop originally."
"I discover that I have only an OEM license for Windows 7" [...] "I legally have a license to use from an installation DVD that has that version on it."
There's your problem. It's actually *not* exactly the same, and you were given the wrong ISO. There's more than one distribution image for Windows 7, each almost identical to the rest - except for the code that handles activation, which accepts only certain key sets depending on whether the disc is intended for OEM, retail, etcetera. It's a PITA as you discovered, just not for the reason you thought. They do the same with their Office line, more of those same-but-different discs depending on whether it's OEM, Academic, Retail, Corporate, etc. It inconveniences their paying customers but has no deterrent on pirates that I can discern (if anything, I think it would only encourage them).
Machines that come with Windows 7 should (ethically at least) come with recovery media, but skinflint OEMs instead tend to sell them with a recovery partition and a one-shot image burner app to create your own set of discs - which many customers utterly fail to understand, or even know about, until it's too late.
Global warming *is* happening. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record
We've been measuring the global average temperature for 150 years, and the graph in the top right tells the story of what's been happening to global averages. Only an idiot looks at that graph and says that the temperature is actually going down.
What may or may not be in question is how much of an impact we're actually having on it, and how much of it is a natural trend. They argue that there was actually a mini ice age in the middle ages, and that this is a natural warming of the world as a result of coming out of it. They point to what the Vikings called Vineland, and remind us that they used to grow grapes for wine in Greenland. What they forget is that this mini ice age was caused by the Romans deforesting Europe, and that most of those trees have not grown back... there has to be another reason that the global cooling they caused has been reversing itself.
Beyond that, the thing that's particularly annoying about climate change deniers is that we know that these hydrocarbons (which most climate change scientists are saying is the root cause) are not good for human health. They have been linked to several types of cancers, and are a contributing factor to other quality-of-life diseases like asthma. We also know that exposure to smog has detrimental effects on the local flora and fauna. (well, some plants it's like super fertilizer, but it kills others). Knowing these detrimental effects exist, what surprises me is that some climate change deniers are actively campaigning against change, because they believe global warming to be a myth. Even if we can't agree whether humankind is responsible for the climate change, can we at least agree that reducing hydrocarbon emissions is a good thing to be trying to do regardless on its impact on the global average temperature?