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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.

10 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Meaningless by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    IQ scores are more or less meaningless in this context. A nation does not have an "IQ".

    In this context, at best it is a measure of how well the country's culture conditions people to taking standardized tests.

    1. Re:Meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In this instance (if the correlation is legit), it's more likely that it stems from a better educated population being able to afford to buy software, as opposed to having to illegally copy it.

    2. Re:Meaningless by r1348 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In other news: "IQ tests actually measure wealth"

    3. Re:Meaningless by buchner.johannes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Correlation is not causation, therefore there are many possible explanation. Wealth correlates with IQ (better education but also nutrition), and wealth probably correlates with piracy. Out comes a correlation of IQ and piracy.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    4. Re:Meaningless by skids · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My money would be on a better educated population realizing that a larger proportion of available software is utter crap, and not wanting it in the first place.

      --
      Someone had to do it.
    5. Re:Meaningless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      from a better educated population being able to afford to buy software, as opposed to having to illegally copy it.

      Or that their intelligence leads them to understand that not compensating someone for the work they did is not a moral thing to do.

      But please, go ahead and make excuses for why stealing is acceptable.

      Ok. All the software I pirate is over 20 years old. A lot of it I bought when it came out 20 years ago, and I've just misplaced the media for it. Other times I bought the competitor. In any case the software is no longer commercially relevant, or available except from abandonware rakers. Whether I buy abandonware from rakers with dubious claims of ownership, or get it from free abandonware, it really makes no difference to the authors of that software, they either made it off the back of their software 20 years ago, or didn't. Just as the framers of the constitution, I don't believe copyright should last over 20 years, there's no way to interpret that as a reasonable incentive, there is no way to interpret that as anything but racketeering. And when you see it's nobody but rakers selling 20 year old software, that evidence backs up my claim. Software is covered by patents; patents expire after 20 years; if software is covered by patents, and is therefore considered an invention, then the rights to it should cede after 20 years, as they do with software patents and all other patents (barring few exceptions).

      Preserving cultural heritage is important, and software is now part of that heritage. If not for abandonware "piracy" that culture will certainly be destroyed in 140 years when the copyright finally expires on it (assuming no more extensions, and why assume that). Due to the maleability of digital media, and the lack of durability that affords, it is quite likely that we would lose far more culture, not just software, due to it only existing in perishable digital form, and the originator not taking adequate care after it loses commercial value in 12 to 36 months. It's already the case that large amounts of source code that authors wanted to release to the public domain has been lost due to insufficient care for the original media. We can't do anything about that, but we can at least do our part to preserve the media that was distributed, because if we don't, we lose all copies of it.

      Given that most media, and especially software has a shelf life of 36-48 months max, before it is abandoned or sold on to rakers (or the rakers just make up a fake contract of sale, as they more often than not do); it is absolutely absurd to have copyrights of 140 years+.

      I don't steal new media, and I'm opposed to that. But I'm also opposed to copyright absolutism. Media is not like physical content; it is ideas and shared experience, and it shouldn't belong solely to the originator, as once it is consumed, it becomes part of all of us like a virus.

      Consider a muffin. If you go to a cafe and steal a muffin; that is wrong. If you go to a cafe and buy a muffin, and decide it was delicious, it's not wrong to go home and make your own muffin just the same.

      I reject your intellectual totalitarianism of the originator. The originator needs some rights, but so does everyone else, we share this planet, and it is not right if rakers can just buy up all the IP until the rest of us are not allowed to think. Fuck that.

  2. High IQ People.. by jimtheowl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... are more likely to use open source software.

  3. Quoting Nassim Taleb by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the New Year's resolution he listed was, "Do not read the latest breakthrough experiment in psychology about, say, the effect of taking cold showers on grammatical ability. Better even read nothing about these 'experiments.'"

  4. Ice cream causes rape rapes by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every summer ice cream sales go up. Every summer reported numbers of rapes go up.

    Therefore ice cream must cause rape.

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  5. Re:Just got accepted into MENSA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    congratulations on being diagnosed mediocre