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High IQ Countries Have Less Software Piracy, Research Finds (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the why-do-we-pirate-stuff,-Mr.-Wayne? dept.

Ernesto Van der Sar, writing for TorrentFreak (edited and condensed): There are hundreds of reasons why people may turn to piracy. A financial motive is often mentioned, as well as lacking legal alternatives. A new study from a group of researchers now suggests that national intelligence can also be added to the list. In a rather straightforward analysis, the research examined the link between national IQ scores and local software piracy rates -- from data provided by the Business Software Alliance. They concluded that there's a trend indicating that countries with a higher IQ have lower software piracy rates.

5 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. High IQ = Less Piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Gee, considering the source, this couldn't be clumsy propaganda, could it?

  2. Re:Meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's much wiser to pirate

    We got burnt by this crap just last weekend for my kid's birthday party. My ex-wife bought a movie online the morning before the party instead of trorrenting it the night before like I told her to. The projector didn't support the DRM.

    Sorry kids, no movie for you even though we paid for it legally.

  3. Re:High IQ People.. by jimtheowl · · Score: 3, Informative

    First, lets keep in mind that this is 'research' by a consortium with a vested interest. Second, that by using the words "shitty countries pirate software more than rich countries" you pretty much established that your horse has wandered away from any moral high grounds.

    I'm not saying that all people with high IQ will automatically use open source software, not even that the majority of people that have high IQs will use open source software. Just that it is more likely to happen if they have an high IQ.

  4. Classic example of incompetent research by golodh · · Score: 3, Informative
    Go ahead, have a look at the underlying paper: https://torrentfreak.com/image...

    It's a classic example of methodological incompetence. Got your popcorn? Let's start the show.

    Their dependent variable is piracy rates (between 0 and 100) as published by the BSA. Not one word about measurement uncertainty in those data. Remember how the MPAA and the BSA used to estimate sales losses due to piracy? That's right: list_price x (penetration_fraction x population of PC's - license sold). I kid you not. And they calmly rely on piracy data from those sources.

    Then their explanatory variable: the so-called IQ measure. They cite the "seminal" work of Lyn,R. VanHaanen, T ()

    Unfortunately for the authors of the latest "correlation paper", the work of Lyn and VanHaanen is anything but uncontroversial. I quote from one of the Lyn and VanHaanenpapers:

    First, we believe that these estab- lish beyond reasonable doubt the validity of our national IQ. This was initially disputed by a number of critics. For in- stance, Ervik (2003, pp. 405â"6) asked âoeare people in rich countries smarter than those in poorer countries?â and con- cluded that âoethe authors fail to present convincing evidence and appear to jump to conclusions.â Nechyba (2004, p. 1178) wrote of the âoerelatively weak statistical evidence and dubious presumptions.â Barnett and Williams (2004, p.) rejected our national IQ as âoevirtually meaninglessâ; Volken (2003, p. 411) described them as âoehighly deficientâ; and Hunt and Sternberg (2006, pp. 133, 136) rejected them as âoetechnically inadequate⦠and meaninglessâ. The answer to these criticisms is that our national IQs are validated by their high correlations with scores in tests of mathematics, science and reading, as shown in Table 1, and also with the numerous other economic and social phenom- ena documented in subsequent tables. These high correla- tions would not be present if our national IQs were meaningless.

    Gettit? The fact that there are high correlations "proves" the validity of their inference that there are meaningful relationships. Did they go to Trump University or what?

    In this vein I especially like the high correlation (see http://www.tylervigen.com/spur... ) between per-capita cheese consumption and people who died by becoming entangled in their bedsheets.

    I wonder if the authors thought to control for that.

    As far as serious research is concerned, this is the end of the line, but lets go on and have a look at their model, shall we?

    They model the value of a fraction through a straightforward regression model: SP_i = \alpha + \beta IQ_i + \lambda X_i + \epsilon_i

    Oops, and there we have the little matter of using straightforward regression to model a fraaaaction, instead of something like logistic regression. For those who don't immediately spot the problem, see e.g. here: http://www.theanalysisfactor.c...

    Ordinary linear models are simply unsuitable to model fractions. A point that's common knowledge with statisticians, but one that's apparently lost on the authors (and the authors on which they base their work).

    Right, lets continue and look at the graph they show with their regression line. Each country counts as one (China has the same weight as the e.g. Senegal and the US has the same weight as the Comores. Look ma, no weights! Sounds good eh? When you look at their graph, China shows up as one serious outlier with an "IQ" score of about 110 and a "piracy" score of about 80%. Only 1 bln people up there. Close by, in the bottom-right corner of their graph is the good ole US of A, weighing in at about 270 mln people, with almost the same score

  5. Re:Meaningless by Prof+G · · Score: 4, Informative

    And any data provided by the BSA is pure bunk. Hence, the study is meaningless for anything other than BSA marketing.