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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!
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The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
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.
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
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.
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 !
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.
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.
Once upon a time, the majority of the population believed the Earth was flat.
What the majority believes may be wrong some times.
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.
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
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?