6364343
story
Comments: 569 +- Technology: BSA Says 41% of Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated on Monday October 12, @07:59AM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicsoftware.gif); width:65px; height:65px;
software
An anonymous reader writes "Individuals are turning to P2P networks and auction sites in staggering numbers to acquire or transfer illegal software and in doing so are harming the economy whilst exposing themselves to malware, identity theft and criminal prosecution, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance. Beyond P2P and auction site piracy, the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware, which often exploit vulnerabilities in illegal software that does not benefit from security updates provided by manufacturers. Although the correlation is not universal, geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware."
Related Stories
Submission: BSA: 41% Software on Personal Computers is Pirated by Anonymous Coward
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
eating one peanut.
-- Channing Pollock
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
41? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:41? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I'm actually surprised it's only 41% pirated software on personal computers, considering it's not often that people buy software applications for non-work purposes and most are free or have alternatives.
But it's true that piracy is hurting the industry (be that software, games, music or movies). Yeah it would be nice if all of that would be free, but it's not a good model to sustain the development and producment. You can always argue that those who like doing it "just for the fun of it" will keep doing so, but it's not going work. The quality suffers and there wont be as many different options or products. There's a reason why everything isn't free already (because it could be - there's nothing to limit it). Market and income is how world works and is needed to produce products, in a way or other. Either by user directly paying for it, or from ad revenue ala google (and losing some of your privacy in the trade) or by other means like open source with support and sponsoring from other companies.
And it's not really a surprise that you might get infected with malware when downloading from warez sites.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Informative)
>>>But it's true that piracy is hurting the industry (be that software, games, music or movies)
No it isn't. See my signature. One study estimated 5000 downloads per 1 lost album sale, and another study estimated 2500 downloads per 1 lost album sale. I took the more-pessimistic estimate. Both studies were done by college universities with no bias, unlike the studies coming from RIAA and BSA. (Use google to find them if you're curious, same way I found them.)
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Informative)
So it is hurting the industry, but not as much as the industry claims.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah just like getting bit by an ant "hurts" me, but not really. It's just an ant. Nothing to have a hissy-fit over like IRAA and the BSA seem to be having.
BSA: "Oh noes! We've been bit an ant. The end is nigh"
US: "Stop being a wuss."
Parent
Re:41? (Score:4, Interesting)
But 2500 is far less than multiple millions. I don't believe the "pirating" of songs and videos has a large impact on the bottom line of these companies, and I wouldn't care if it did, to be honest, but to say it has no impact is just not true. The question of whether that impact is good or bad is simply a matter of perspective.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
And where are they claiming that its lost sales? They've just saying that 41% of software on personal computers is pirated. There's no talk about lost sales.
Stop making stuff up.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, 6 years later, I was able to talk my boss into buying a few extra special toolboxes for the work we do. Something close to $30k a seat a year. Had I never 'pirated' all that software I would have never been able to sell my self to my company, nor sell my company on Matlab toolboxes.
That's makes you part of the problem. If you and everyone like you boycotted Matlab, they would go out of business and someone with less onerous licensing could take over the industry. No snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>>> Both studies were done by college universities with no bias, unlike the studies coming from RIAA and BSA.
>>
>>If it's on the internets it must be true!
No it's in two university studies - published in peer-reviewed journals. Can you not read? Besides if you really thought the 2 studies I cited were wrong, then you'd go off and find some other university studies to prove that copyprivilege infringement is horribly high.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have no automatic right to software. The fact there's no net cost to them does not make it right.
I'm not going to 'deprive myself' of a place to sleep so I'll pick the lock (in a non-damaging way) of your front door and sleep in a spare room in your house. No cost to you so any complaints about my squatting are just based on stupid orthodox morality.
Inane example yes but this sense of entitlement that some people have is sickening. By all means pirate but don't pretend you're not doing anything wrong by doing so.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your spare room is not "abundant." You only have one of them, and it can only hold a finite number of people.
MP3 files are abundant. Once they exist, there can be an infinite number of them at zero additional cost.
You are kidding yourself if you insist that this fact does not change the moral landscape.
Parent
Re:WOW, just wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA doesn't deserve protection under the law anymore. And as much as I'll get flamed for that statement, we're all thinking it, and we're all acting on it.
But if you want a non-inflammatory morally relevant statement - I've been paying taxes on blank media for years, paid directly to the RIAA, and THAT has bought me any free copies I want, of whatever I want. Because I've already paid for it. And so have you.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's true that piracy is hurting the industry (be that software, games, music or movies).
[citation needed]
I'm sure it was the pirates. The global recession had nothing to do with it.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's true that piracy is hurting the industry
Piracy may be specifically hurting IP industries, but it's a net win for the economy. The dead weight loss [wikipedia.org] caused by monopoly rights damages the economy as a whole, probably by amounts that dwarf the whole revenue of those industries, and only piracy mitigates that damage.
but it's not a good model to sustain the development and producment.
At the efficiency levels seen in the monopoly industries it's obvious that neither is monopoly a good model to sustain development and production. At about 5% efficiency, as in the music industry, it's even worse than the worst of government run programs. Others, like productivity software, have a level of fungibility which has at least had some competitive effect. None, however, demonstrate anything remotely like what an acceptable overhead should look like in a competitive industry and together the IP industries are an albatross around the neck of todays western economy.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's true that piracy is hurting the industry (be that software, games, music or movies). Yeah it would be nice if all of that would be free, but it's not a good model to sustain the development and producment.
So if Jimmy the Geeklet pirates Windows and Photoshop and MS Office, and then when he grows up to be James the Geek with a real job he already knows Windows and MS Office and Photoshop and expects to be able to use those at work and maybe even buys copies (err, licenses) for his own use at home, this is a net loss to the "industry" compared to his knowing and wanting to use KDE and the GIMP and Open Office?
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Insightful)
I simply have to point out that very little of the world's population makes anywhere NEAR "$80-120 an hour". Living in SW Arkansas, I don't think that I could find anyone making 120, but I might find a few making nearly 80. The highest paid individual in my extended family makes a little less than 30, and most make 12 or less. In fact, more than 1/2 make well under $10/hour.
Pricing schemes look a whole lot different to a man who can purchase a game for one hour's wages, as opposed to a man who has to spend a day's wages for the same game. Especially considering that people who make $10/hr have little if any savings or investments.
Just something to think about.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Funny)
While you're guessing with such precision, why not choose 42% and grab more nerd eyes?
Because pirating software is not the answer to life the universe and everything.
Parent
Re:41? (Score:5, Interesting)
While you're guessing with such precision, why not choose 42% and grab more nerd eyes?
Because pirating software is not the answer to life the universe and everything.
No no no no no.
42 is the answer.
Pirating software is the question.
Parent
Two of the three letters in their name... (Score:5, Funny)
are true. We'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which.
Re:Two of the three letters in their name... (Score:4, Funny)
BA? None of them have Master's or PhDs? It's all arts, no sciences degrees? None are left with only high school diplomas or GEDs? None are high school dropouts?
Next you'll say they all got degrees in the same subject!
Parent
MS reps say its easier to pirate on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
BSA Says 41% Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated
Well customers choose linux because Apps are easier to pirate [gotthefacts.org]. Steve Winfield of Microsoft's anti-FOSS Partner Technology Team (a.k.a. Delta Force) says so. It must be true.
In other news, sources not partnered with Microsoft announce that Microsoft's desktop market share has dipped down to 59%. Between Conficker and Internet banking exploits, it could happen.
Seriously, better check the BSA's definition of 'pirated'. Previous announcements like this turned out to classify any non-MS software as 'pirated'.
Parent
Re:Two of the three letters in their name... (Score:5, Funny)
"BS Alliance" doesn't sound right to you?
Parent
Re:Two of the three letters in their name... (Score:5, Funny)
You know who else did informal surveys? Hitl-*whack* <OW!> *thud*
Parent
BSA invents statistics. (Score:5, Interesting)
Their first graph (which is in percentages, but they don't label the scale LOL) shows remarkably low rates of malware, and an alleged piracy rate (whatever that is) that is 4-10x higher.
Maybe they should check out http://garwarner.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
BSA+RIAA+MPAA=organizations that make up stories and wait for their fake "facts" to be reused by their legislative bought henchmen.
E
Re:BSA invents statistics - higher ethics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe one reason for such a poor correlation between alleged copyright infringement and malware rates is that most who engage in and enable copyright infringement actually do have higher ethics than some companies which deliberately add creepy spyware and malware-like features to their applications in the name of controlling what user's do. Indeed, I wonder if some even explicitly choose copyright infringement sources simply to get spy and malware disabled versions of certain applications.
Parent
Re:BSA (Score:4, Funny)
Bull. Shit. Artists.
In. William. Shatner's. Voice.
Parent
Well, if that's how they want to think about it... (Score:4, Funny)
Then far be it from me to not meet their expectations.
"Hey kids! Remember that new game you wanted? Well, I need to get us up to quota!"
Oooooo pretty graph! (Score:5, Funny)
Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
They aren't, and so they won't.
What they are concerned about is losing market share to open source, so they'd rather pretend it doesn't exist and try to eradicate the philosophy of free software in the public mind.
Parent
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
What a lousy article - all puff and no content:
- The FA discusses online auction sites as a "hotbed" of trading illegal software. But it doesn't say whether the BSA distinguish between online auctions offering cracked copies for download, pirated installation media or perfectly legitimate resale of software which the seller has no further use for.
- There's no real explanation of how they reached this figure - do they assume a single person using a torrent installs the software once? Twice? Never? Once then decides they don't really need it so uninstalls it?
- Even if the BSA did explain how they reached this figure, how do we know that their methodology is sound and gives reasonably accurate answers? AFAIK there is no methodology that is generally known to give accurate answers to the question of "how many PCs have application X installed, where X may or may not phone home and there may or may not be cracked versions of X in the wild which modify any existing phone-home functionality?"
Thing is, the BSA must know that these numbers are not reliable and that they can't get reliable numbers. I think the reason this article exists is the BSA are seeding the news wires. Who wants to bet that the next thing they'll do is lobby representatives in governments around the world using these bullshit figures and that's the only reason the figures exist?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
They simply live in a world where all second hand software sales are piracy. Its the only possible way this figure could even be remotely correct.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
But it doesn't say whether the BSA distinguish between online auctions offering cracked copies for download, pirated installation media or perfectly legitimate resale of software which the seller has no further use for.
Well, from the PDF of the actual report, they run through a bunch of 'case studies' which are by and large about who they targeted on these auctions sites like iOffer:
In August 2009, BSA announced that its members won a $210,563 judgment in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Matthew Miller of Newark, Del., who sold illegal copies of software through an Internet auction site. Software programs published by Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft were at the center of the case, which stemmed from a 2008 investigation by BSA. US District Judge Susan Illston awarded the plaintiffs $195,000 in statutory damages and an additional $15,563 for filing costs and attorneys’ fees. Miller was barred from committing future acts of copyright infringement involving Adobe, Autodesk, and Microsoft software products, and was ordered to immediately destroy any and all infringing copies of such software in his possession or control. According to legal documents filed on behalf of BSA member companies, the defendant “admitted he had ‘downloaded software, burned and copied CDs, and sold about 200 to outsiders for $8.00 to $12.00.’” Records in the case also describe how Miller used the popular iOffer Web site to sell unlicensed copies of BSA member software. In one particular instance, Miller was accused of offering approximately $12,000 worth of software to an undercover investigator for just $52, with an agreed price of $45 after some haggling.
And another:
In early 2009, Timothy Dunaway of Wichita Falls, Texas, was sentenced to 41 months in prison by US District Court Judge Reed O’Conner for selling counterfeit computer software through the Internet. Dunaway was sentenced to two years of supervised release, ordered to pay $810,000 in restitution, and forfeit a Ferrari 348 TB and Rolex watch. From July 2004 through May 2008, Dunaway operated approximately 40 Web sites that sold a large volume of downloadable counterfeit software. He operated computer servers in Austria and Malaysia; US and foreign law enforcement agents cooperated in the investigation. Dunaway purchased advertising for his Web site on major Internet search engines and processed more than $800,000 through credit-card merchant accounts under his control. The software sold by Dunaway had a combined retail value of more than $1 million.
There are more. I didn't see anything in the report about illegitimate versus legitimate resale and replication. I'm guessing they rely on the license terms to determine whether or not it's legitimate for me to resell my Warcraft 3 CDs or Windows XP Key. I'm guessing that Blizzard & Microsoft would be the ones informing them that's not legitimate.
By and large, however, the report focuses on people who pretty blatantly violate copyright and sell them on auction sites. A guy I knew in college did this and made a couple thousand on eBay before getting a seriously nasty letter from Microsoft. This would have been in ~2001 I think. I'm sure the same crap goes on with more serious consequences.
I'm not defending the BSA but they list case studies of the kind of piracy they are targeting.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Close. FA means "Friendly Article" and TFA means "The Friendly Article". RTFA means "Read The Friendly Article". RTFG
Parent
Piracy on home computers (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the BSA is only concerned with business software, what they probably mean is that 41% of copies of MS Office on home computers are not legitimate copies, mostly copied from work. If those people didn't have a pirate copy of Office, that would probably be using OO.org or some other free equivalent, they wouldn't be paying for it.
(I guess a lot of people have academic versions of Office, and other app;ications like Adobe's suite, and they no longer are students so I guess that makes them pirates too.
Re:Piracy on home computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Maybe software prices are too high? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to wave the bullshit flag on this one. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bloat (Score:5, Funny)
Depends.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've mentioned it before. I have a friend that almost refuses to buy music when they can use whatever the current flavor of P2P is to get it. I had a different friend that gladly would download the newest games from torrents and play them. Not to mention the various other indiscretions I or other friends have done. Several people still will email me with a 'hey, do you happen to have a serial number for...' These aren't college students or poor workers from some low-end job. They are often well paid professionals (often in IT). They just don't want to spend the money. It's not some sense of 'information should be free!' or 'software shouldn't be patented!'. They just don't want to spend the money, so while these reports may not have numbers that everyone believes, I certainly have seen it day to day. Just without a metric that I can quote.
It needs to be said that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It needs to be said that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
More like 0% here (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Ubuntu [ubuntu.com] user, I can say precisely 0% of the software on my PC is pirated AND I have no issues with malware, viruses, trojans, etc. (according to ClamAV [clamav.net] anyway). In fact, probably 99% of the software I run is free & open source. The only proprietary software I use for the time being is Adobe Flash and the ATI Radeon driver, both legally obtained.
I know we'd all like to say that there is no link between illegally copied software (I refuse to use the word "pirated") and malware, but I'm sure we've all seen instances where relatives' PCs got infected by software downloaded from Kazaa, etc.
What really surprises me is that, when given the choice between maybe catching viruses or getting prosecuted for downloading/installing illegal software and using the free and legal open source equivalent, so many people still choose to download their software illegally. I have to say, as a full-time user and software developer, Ubuntu's offering is really, really well put-together and a pleasure to use.
Statistically worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Can't measure it - you can't measure how many people downloaded your software through illicit channels because, by definition, those channels are usually unmonitored, don't keep logs, and aren't subject to easy investigation. You might be able to measure a particular computer at a particular point in time but any measurement being done on "behalf of" the BSA is going to be worthless. You'd have to randomly monitor thousands of PC's in dozens of categories (home, business, mobile, poweruser, etc.) and get permission to report on any "unlicensed" software there, and then chase it up with the company concerned to see if it was actually unlicensed (rather than just using the wrong VLK or similar for convenience).
2) Can't compare it - the chances of those metrics being stable across such countries as Turkey and the US are unlikely.
3) Can't correlate it - Just because malware goes up with pirated installations doesn't mean anything - it just means that the pirates prefer to download porn which may or may not introduce malware... it doesn't mean the malware is in the pirate software.
Statistics are worthless quoted out of context. We have no idea what was measured, how, why, what bias was introduced by the measures, or anything else.
To be honest, I imagine the percentage to be *higher*... I've seen dozens of people with Winzip on their computers who haven't actually bought it but they heard they needed it to open ZIP files. I've seen dozens of work laptops come back with full installations of football games, office, etc.... technically that's copyright infringement ("software piracy") because it's a breach of the license. I expect the true figure to be nearer 80 or 90%.
But then you have the reasoning that it's somehow linked to malware in any way other than "people get malware too"... almost 100% of the home PC's I see have items of malware on them (again, depending on your definition).
If you want to say "copyright infringement is bad and puts £5 on the cost of every game you buy, or £50 on the price of Office", people would listen. Making up bollocks statistics about nonsense correlations just makes me switch off and let's me know that, actually, you're just trying to scare me into buying things because you can't think any other way would work (and thus don't understand software "piracy" at all). I don't pirate, either at work or at home. I just move things to open-source if I can't afford the real package, and I never buy anything without a demo. No demo, no trial version, no purchase. I also don't buy anything with DRM that interferes with my usage of the product. I'm not alone.
Stop spending your time analysing vague correlations and look at those statistics about why people pirate in the first place. Almost always it's cost, convenience and because a certain percentage of those "pirate" downloads are actually your own customers just trying to get the bloody thing working (I've had to break DRM schemes in work in order to be able to install compliant to our licensing - it was tons easier than our negotiating with the company in question to do the same thing). Be open with those stats and then things get interesting: How many pirates, on average, end up revealing upon further investigation that they *already* own the software in question, but the DRM got in the way? Or that they lost the install disk? Or that they needed original media to recover their PC's and it wasn't supplied by the manufacturer? I've seen all three of those and even done the second myself - I needed a particular install disk and it was an emergency and the person I was working for didn't have the original disk to hand. After I ensured that they were entitled to the licences, I just downloaded one and used that instead (after checksum verification). Does that contribute as being "another" PC with pirate software?
When will /. stop reporting this nonsense? (Score:5, Interesting)
Their Calculation goes like this:
as you can see, they just have to raise their estimates of "how much software a PC needs" a little bit to skyrocket the piracy... also they don't consider people using free software or 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!"
BSA credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
As always, it is unclear just what they consider "pirated". For example, if your company purchases 100% legitimate software via eBay, the BSA will not accept this as your software during an audit. They refuse to accept any and all eBay receipts. Hence, it is quite likely that they have counted all purchases via auction sites as pirated, even though this is clearly not true.
This is only one of many "rules" they apply that make little or no sense. Did you know that possessing the complete packaging of a program, including the original CD/DVD and the enclosed license certificate is, according to the BSA, not proof of ownership? You must have an original receipt, with the company (or individual) name correctly spelled, which explicitly lists the product and version.
The BSA may once have been a way to combat piracy'it has evolved into a monstrosity. Microsoft, Adobe and the other companies should terminate their relationships with it and start over.
Re:Because malware never comes with legal software (Score:5, Insightful)
Well:
1. Is simply not true. Adware and spyware are common in commercial software.
2. Also not true - the first thing a pirate does is strip out the crap.
3. If you *have* paid for it, it could be infected. That's why you scan everything.
Parent
Re:Because malware never comes with legal software (Score:5, Informative)
This article is BS. There are probabilistic elements in software piracy and malware, but those statistics came from /dev/random
If you know where to get your pirated software, then it's more than the distributors honor is worth, to let anything dodgy get into their release.
The bit about "geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware"; Ok that is probably true, and in S.Korea I don't think you can call legally sell it as a "computer" if it isn't full to the brim with malware.
Parent
Re:Because malware never comes with legal software (Score:5, Insightful)
- If you've paid for the software, it's highly unlikely that it will contain malware or adware.
Unless it comes from Sony or Microsoft...
Parent
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
harming the economy
Right, like they would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it.
I love this bullshit. As you say, there's no way of telling how many percent of those who pirated would actually buy the software at hand. In my experience often people pirate because they're lazy, meaning they know some program from a while back and instead of looking for a free alternative they just pirate it because they're used to it. But also sometimes they actually need that program, however more often they don't.
Also it's very easy to throw expressions such as "harming the economy" around. But let's think about what this means. If, and we have to remember the big if here, there would be a significant increase in such sales -- instead of people looking for free and/or open source alternatives (which by the way is already happening, anyway let's continue with the hypothesis) -- then in an international aspect this would harm the economy as the national currency would be weakened due to less trade. HOWEVER (one of those important caps moments) -- don't forget that piracy is also an international phenomenon, meaning if all countries have 10% piracy it would be -- in terms of economic balance, exactly the same as if we had 0% -- or 80%.
What about national level? Well at national level the currency would merely shift towards those selling the software, as they collect the fees.
What about the personal economy? Well you would have a slightly stronger currency (given that other countries ignore piracy) yet you would still, at a personal level, make a loss.
Now let's ignore the moral aspects here, you can yell theft all you want but that's another discussion. This discussion was about the economy and how someone tries to bullshit you from this angle to change your mind. Change your mind for the right reasons, if you consider it theft then fine, but don't eat whatever crap that's thrown at you. By using the expressions such as "economy", a very big machine which can be difficult to understand, you can persuade somebody into a lot of things, since ultimately they will tend to feel stupid because they cannot break down the concept and understand how this hurts the economy -- you see no explanation is given, and that's the point of the argument. So if you feel stupid, that's even more of a reason to ask the question: why?
Parent