Slashdot Log In
Calling BS On the BSA Global Piracy Report
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun May 17, 2009 12:35 PM
from the i-think-that-stands-for-bachelor-of-skepticism dept.
from the i-think-that-stands-for-bachelor-of-skepticism dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Business Software Alliance released their annual global piracy report earlier this week. In addition to the usual claims of
software piracy (PDF) and the grudging acknowledgment of open source software, Michael Geist noted that the report ultimately undermined one of the BSA's core arguments — that countries which enact DMCA-style legislation experience significantly reduced piracy rates. Questions have also been raised over the BSA's methodology, as has happened in the past."
Related Stories
[+]
Flaws In a BSA Software Piracy Report? 288 comments
Ian Lamont writes "The Business Software Alliance has just released its state piracy study (full PDF also available). The BSA says that one in five pieces of software in use in the United States is unlicensed, and notes that piracy rates are highest in Ohio (27%). However, as noted by the Industry Standard, there are problems with the state study, and the way the BSA is presenting the data: the study only includes eight states, and it is making some questionable connections, including the claim that lost state and local tax revenue from piracy would have been enough to 'hire nearly 25,000 experienced police officers.'"
Submission: Calling BS on the BSA Global Piracy Report by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
attack is the best defense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
You see what I did there?
Parent
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't "get it". Artist's rights are one thing - what the *iaa's are doing is quite another thing. If the various enforcement gestapos could be controlled, and set on a CONSTRUCTIVE PATH, then we might actually be able to address what an artist's rights might be. Today, copyright and patent laws are being abused, twisted into unrecognizable abortions, and the PEOPLE'S RIGHTS are being trampled.
You're an artist? Great. How much money has your "label" made, and how much have you made from your art? Is the ratio something like 1000/1, or 10,000/1, or maybe even more?
The mafiaa people don't give jack shit about you, any more than they care about the customers. You are an asset, nothing more, and nothing less, and you are as expendable as an office chair.
Parent
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
I Guess that makes Suge Knight [wikipedia.org] the Steve Ballmer of the Rap world ;-)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The sad thing is that the music of independent artists is also being pirated, though to a lesser degree. They have no means of recompense whatsoever, in fact attempts to deter piracy are so prohibitively unpopular that the MAFIAA has a monopoly on effective countermeasures.
Come to think of it, probably the best thing the MAFIAA could do would be an ad campaign that tells true stories of *indie* artists whose careers have been compromised by piracy. Then people might realize how many brilliant artists stil
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Downloads are not profitable. They have never been profitable. The internet exists to link people and computers together. It is not designed to make money, and it is not going to contort itself into some bizarre shape involving DRM and other nonsense just because you want some cash. If you need the money, make it on concert swag and CDs (yes, people actually do still buy those, if you sell them!) like people used to. You don't need the internet to make money. The only reason you have for using the internet is buzzword-compliance. I'm sorry that you're unable to make money on the internet, but pre-internet indie bands were facing much tougher challenges (more expensive equipment, no internet to sell their mp3s on, etc.) and still did fine.
Parent
I beg to differ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The internet exists to link people and computers together. It is not designed to make money,
Tell that to eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Google, and iTunes. If these online companies were not making money and showing a constant stream of profit, they would not still be on the internet to this day.
eBay, PayPal, and Amazon, make money as 'middlemen' to the physical enconomy comprising largely of the buying and selling of 3-dimensional objects. Should 'replicator technology' seen in STAR TREK become a reality, they will become unecessary and will fall by the wayside of history.
Google makes money as an ad agency that happens to own and operate a wildly popular internet search engine and a complete copy of the non-binary portion of USENET via Google Groups. Once somebody comes up with a search engine that is consistently better than Google and mirrors Google Groups in its entirety, they too will fall by the wayside of history as well.
iTunes makes money by selling 'digital downloads' of pieces of popular culture (primarily music). They are proof that it is possible to make money online selling non 3-dimensional objects. Once their entire catalogue of downloads is available for free online elsewhere on the internet, they too will fall by the wayside of history as well.
As the parent poster said, the internet exists to link people and computers together--it also exists to exchange information in the form of computer files. The media cartels realize the internet can distribute (their) content cheaper and faster (and illegally) than they can which will eventually make them fall by the wayside of history as well. There response to this looming threat in the past shows that they are desparate and will do ANYTHING to continue to exist. This is simply self-preservation in action.
Parent
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst I gave up touring in a similar gig myself a few years ago, it was always the case that conditions are pretty bad on tour.
Instead of moaning about that why not get another line of work if you dislike the conditions under which you work-thats what I did. I now play mainly for enjoyment, but I still play-face it the music scene is one in which you get involved for the pleasure not the money. If you think you will make a fortune you are probably deluded.
Nearly all the acts I worked and played with made all of their money from live playing. Its a tough life but if you love it you are prepared to accept the downside. In all my time I never bitched about copyright!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ehhh, don't feel to lonely. I used to work construction. I also used to drive a truck. Canadians and Mexicans both are taking over the trucking industry, the Mexicans took over the construction en masse. I couldn't BUY a job in either field today. Know what? There are no laws to protect me, or the tens of thousands of other people like me. I LIKE working with my hands, making wood, concrete, and iron take shape. That's a thing of the past. With the economy in the shape it's in, even the Mexicans are
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
However the justifications for piracy are a little tough to bear. It's incomprehensible to us that people should be offended by the notion of paying for every song and/or movie in their collection.
I'm offended by having to buy four copies to play in four different places. If I buy a CD - and I do - I want to be able to listen to it at home, in my car and on my MP3 player. I only download for free those tracks that are offered for free by the artist/vendor. Amazon.com has free tracks from time to time. So does Janis Ian. So do other MP3 sites. Stop pretending that I'm hurting you because you only sold be a CD and couldn't get me to buy all the different formats you can think up.
Parent
Re:Another pro-piracy article on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of hot air in claims from the BSA about losing so and so much money.
The reality would be that much of the software that's in use illegally is by people that wouldn't have purchased it in the first case. So if it was completely impossible to pirate the software then it wouldn't be purchased at all.
What BSA members wants is a certain level of "leak" to make people get the taste for the software.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It has never been the artists who collect on anything except for their live performances. From the moment they sign their contracts, they are "in debt" to the music publishers for marketing and advertising service fees. All the money made in selling records, tapes, CDs and MP3s is collected by the labels. The artists barely and rarely get any of that money.
If ever there was an "ulterior motive" it is the RIAA claiming "artists" when they should be claiming their employers... the labels... the publishers!
Why are they so grudging with admissions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Logically they should look at this report, realise that DMCA like legislation doesn't work and divert resources elsewhere. Why do I think they're not going to do this?
Re:Why are they so grudging with admissions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Had to laugh at ... (Score:4, Funny)
"... and lower than all but three Asian countries (Japan, Australia, and New Zealand)"
I read the fine article, but not the whole report. Wondering where this came from!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If their ability to understand geography is any guide then at best they might get things right a third of the time!
Re:Had to laugh at ... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Had to laugh at ... (Score:5, Funny)
or maybe even "cultural similarity", though that's not the case here
Correct. For cultural similarity, you'd lump Australia with the United States. Two colonies to witch the British exported their criminals and other undesirables.
Parent
Re:Had to laugh at ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
My business was raided by the BSA (Score:5, Funny)
I used a megaphone to yell "HA, WE USE LINUX!"
Then I back-flipped onto a motorbike and sprayed them with sand.
Actually that might have been a dream.
Re:My business was raided by the BSA (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I have a pirated version of a linux distribution and other FOSS
Is there another torrent so I can pirate the source code too?
BSA Ads on Slashdot (Score:2)
Looks like Slashdot isn't above taking money from the BSA. In the bar above I see "Anti-Piracy Organization" - Rewards Offered up to $1 Million! It was a Google ad so I clicked on it, which hopefully costs them a few bucks.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I should turn ads back on to get a laugh or two. Out of curiosity, was it just a karma threshold that I crossed to get the option to turn ads off or is it some sort of seniority thing?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I should turn ads back on to get a laugh or two. Out of curiosity, was it just a karma threshold that I crossed to get the option to turn ads off or is it some sort of seniority thing?
Maybe if you have adblock on for too many years, they figure you'll never see them anyway, so why waste the bandwidth trying to?
Re: (Score:2)
I've never used AdBlock on principle, and I got the 'disable ads' checkbox for 'making a great contribution to the community'. Go figure.
hanging (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe that's what we have to do again.
huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
>Questions have also been raised over the BSA's methodology
BSA has a methodology?
Re:huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
> BSA has a methodology?
Yup. "Sue no matter what."
They break in to your place of business, having convinced federal marshals that you would destroy all the evidence on your computers if they didn't. Then they take all your computers, based on whatever tip they got from an ex-employee or other anonymous source and had a judge sign off on while you weren't there (hearing held ex parte). They run their own infringement finding software that attempts to scan your network and seize all the computers they can, shutting you down whether you were guilty or not.
Finally, they sue you unless you can provided dated purchase orders for each and every computer and piece of software. Yes, every. And no, the little "Genuine Windows" sticker on the PCs won't save you. It doesn't count.
After this, you get dragged into court and urge you to settle for $bignum while getting really expensive site license agreements that protect you so long as you pay them way more than all your software is actually worth. This has never happened to me personally, but I refer you to the case of Ernie Ball [cnet.com].
Parent
BSA Methodology: Make it up as you go along... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror [www.idg.se] (sorry, link in Swedish only)
They used a combination of general estimates and figures for other countries. No Swedish businesses were involved in the study at all...
DMCA reduces piracy rates (Score:4, Interesting)
The fallacy being that the crooks will comply with the law, as
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Same with ID-cards, being pushed by the consumer sector to reduce Credit-Card fraud. All it will do is boost the trade in fake IDs ..
If someone picks up your credit card and doesn't need an ID, they can start charging as soon as they walk into a store. It takes time to get a fake ID together, time in which you can discover your credit card is missing, and call it in.
Oh No! Zimbabwe is pirating! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken? Is a surprise that people pirate in such conditions? Shouldn't there be some acceptance that in a country where physical property is hard to come by/keep that people ignore intangible property?
Roughly speaking the firm takes an estimate of the amount of computers shipped to individual companies, takes a further estimate of what software should be on those machines, and compares that, not to exact software sales, but to interviews with software vendors.
I don't see how such data gathering methods can give a legitimate support either, I don't think such sloppy researching would pass any scientific rigour, combine that with a test group of 6000 out of a supposed 6 billion and you8 don't have anything actually useful to go by. Its like setting up a small niche website and then estimating world web browser usage based on adding up the monthly percentages of visits from each browser.
Re: (Score:2)
That and Zimbabwe has a per-capita income of about $200 USD per year. By the time someone there saves up for Vista, the Duke Nukem trademarks will have entered the public domain and DNF will go gold as an open source project.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Why is the BSA even surveying countries which recently had a major war, are having battles with rebels or are suffering hyper inflation to the point their economy is broken?"
BSA is about piracy, isn't it? Well, I'd say high seas and recent war scenarios are the most suitable for pirates, don't you think so? Arrrrh!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That "physical property" including computers to run any software on as well as the electricity necessary to operate them. Maybe the BSA dosn't
And the BSA still doesn't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
A pirated copy is not necessarily a lost sale. If you look at the highest rate list compared to the lowest rate list for countries you'll see that the countries with the highest rates of piracy generally have the lowest per capita GDP. This shows a link between ability to pay for software and actually paying for it.
To put a face on this, the recent college grad with a job at 7-11 and $50k in student loan debt is going to need tools to make the money needed to buy tools.
Another factor is the fact that the BSA still counts an install of Adobe's $2500 Master Suite on Mom's computer as being a lost sale. Trust me when I say that Mom only has that because she thought it was neat to paste pictures of her and Dad standing on top of the Eiffel tower. She does not use it commercially and therefore cannot justify spending $2500 on an idle amusement. If Adobe managed to make a DRM scheme that couldn't be cracked they still wouldn't get a sale from her. Instead she'd just go back to scissors and rubber cement.
In fact according to the BSA PDF.
Consumers generally install more software on their
computers, both new and old, than businesses. Hence,
while consumers account for 45 percent of PCs shipped,
they account for 55 percent of PC software deployed.
This fits well with the idea that consumers are installing professional software that is never used commercially.
Cost and ability to pay are the biggest factors of piracy. The BSA needs to segregate their report into two sections for consumer piracy and commercial piracy. Consumer piracy is less likely to be a lost sale than commercial piracy.
Furthermore, companies whose professional software packages may have consumer appeal might want to try performing a trial where they make the latest version of their software package available for free as a beta or time limited trial with semi-anonymous usage tracking to figure out exactly what patterns distinguish a professional user from someone just screwing around. This would allow the company to use this data to offer a mostly functional 'Home' version for dirt cheap that has just the right features disabled to make sure that professional users won't ever touch it. A home user of Photoshop, for example, will probably never work with 100MB images whereas a professional designing a poster or magazine spread will. Careful analysis and planning will allow these companies to actually make a few extra sales off of lower budget consumers without cutting into their customer base for professional users.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think there's a good chance that a pirated copy is a lost sale, though not necessarily of the pirated software. I mean, even if Photoshop suddenly became impossible to pirate (I assume it isn't already), people would still need to manipulate images. They'd just have to use some cheaper - or free - alternative.
Re:And the BSA still doesn't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
My 18 year old griped at me a few weeks ago because I wouldn't let him install a pirated version of photoshop on a computer that is on our home LAN. He presented almost this exact same argument. I still don't buy it. If he needs tools to learn, he can pick them up at an academic discount while he is still a student and gain experience with them that way. After he graduates, he doesn't need to own the software himself as a business professional unless he's going to only do freelancing.... which, I am compelled to point out, is a poor business plan if one is intending to repay a $50K student loan.
Parent
Re:And the BSA still doesn't get it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Your situation is slightly different from what I was talking about (and had to go through myself) where the student is no longer living at home and has to be able to budget rent, utilities, food, transportation, tuition, books and tools on a part-time income while only qualifying for enough financial aid to pay for most of their tuition. I have faith that since your son is still living at home and that you are claiming him as a dependent in lieu of charging him rent he was able to afford the $449 to $999 (after educational discount) to pick up a CS4 suite package that contains the software he needs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can't afford an apartment, stay at home or with family. If you can't afford a sports car, don't buy one. Its not the car manufactures fault. If you can't afford a 16 core 65Gb ram number crunching monster server, don't buy one, its not IBM
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
BSA is killing at least 9 babies every day.
5 our of 10 RIAA employees snort crack.
MPAA responsible for 80% of Global Warming.
In line with the BSA methodology this has all been confirmed through the use of chicken intestines, tea leaves and and an unhealthy amount of LSD.
Re: (Score:2)
MPAA products are used by %99.95* of the people who are responsible for climate change.
* (the remainder are both deaf and blind)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
5 out of 10 RIAA employees snort crack.
You do know that crack, being insoluble, can't be snorted? Of course you did! How silly of me, delivering a product by the most inefficient means possible is an riaa specialty. I have to say, it's good to see they live their personal lives by the same rules they want to foist off on the rest of us.
Arguing with the BSA (Score:5, Insightful)
Michael Geist noted that the report ultimately undermined one of the BSA's core arguments -- that countries which enact DMCA-style legislation experience significantly reduced piracy rates.
Yeah, but you can't fight these guys with logic. All they'll say to that is "See? The problem is so bad in those countries we need *even stronger laws*!
Logic and evidence is pointless when the statistics and facts in this situation are so highly open to interpretation. That makes it problem solvable only by lobbying, not facts. Those of us who are against their draconian measures need to become as politically influential as they are - something that seems unlikely right now.
Re:Arguing with the BSA (Score:4, Interesting)
I have noticed that with few exceptions, the people who would make good politicians - that is, the people who actually know things about relevant issues - are drawn to professions that would actually earn real money. For example, how many computer programmers do you know who have run for office?
Almost any programmer worth his salt is going to be earning a lot more money programming than he could in public office - it's irrelevant whether his knowledge would be directly applicable to laws that would be passed during his term.
If we want smart people in office examining our laws, we need to pay them what they're worth.
Parent
It is a shame because BSA has (Score:5, Insightful)
All FOSS Users and non-upgraders are Pirates! (Score:5, Insightful)
as you can see, they just have to raise their estimates of "how much software a PC needs" to skyrocket the piracy... also they don't consider people using older versions of software, so all in all their piracy report means nothing more than "we would have wanted to sell THIS much more software!"
Thepirat eBay (Score:3, Funny)
They can't even spell thepiratebay correctly.
I wonder if eBay has threatened Thepirat eBay.