BSA IDC FUD

truthsearch writes "News.com.com is reporting that a 'study, commissioned by the BSA and conducted by IDC, found that in general, nations with the lowest piracy rates had the largest IT sectors. The study, which examined 57 countries, predicted that a 10-point reduction in the rate of piracy over four years could generate 1.5 million jobs and $64 billion taxes worldwide.' The BSA, er... Microsoft, will use this study to convince governments to crack down on piracy. 'Overall, the countries that have the poorest record of IP rights have slower rates of IT growth,' BSA CEO Robert Holleyman said. Oh, and the countries with the most oppression have had the slowest IT growth, but that can't be the cause, nah."

The study..

[AftanGustur]

The Study.. [bsa.org]

Re:Easy...

[luzrek]

Then IT industry will crash and the people that had cushy jobs because they were pseudo-wizards will get laid off, and companies will start using software that doesn't require wizards to run, and actually lets them focus on their business instead of their IT dept.

Which is why KB toys switched to Linux based systems for their cash registers and inventory maintience. Or the Mass. Dept. of Revenue switched to Linux because it costs them $200 a terminal vs. $400+ a terminal for Windows (after taking into consideration sysadmins and training).

In general compainies which are large enough to have to seriously pay attention to information technologies are large enough so that no matter what they will need to hire a sysadmin regaurdless of what software they are running. So for larger compainies OSS solutions really are cheaper. Small businesses should be able to choose either closed source or open source solutions since their needs are pretty much dealt with in Office Suite + Money Management software and then the choice really comes down to $80 for StarOffice, $500 for MS Office, or Open Office for free. Only the MS Office version requires closed source operating systems.

Of course the best solution for a small business would be if someone would make a simple specialized use system for inventory management and billing, regardless of weither or not it is open source. Kinda like the ones that KB Toys bought (which were Open Source).

Re:Note to BSA: go fuck yourselves

[swb]

I've always thought that the BSA raid stories were BS. There's too much fear, not enough reality.

IANAL, but...

1) BSA can't just demand to search your business. You can tell them no, they have no legal power.

2) They can go to court and get access, but this is a complex process frought with a lot of potential closed doors and not a small amount of cost and delay. Token cooperation may yield a judge that dismisses the BSA claims altogether, especially if you can argue that its just a strongarm tactic to increase revenue and not a legitimate enforcement tactic based upon a well-founded suspicion of intential copyright violation.

3) The whole raid concept itself sounds kind of dubious -- there's loads of companies that it would take a huge team of people MONTHS to try to audit, and that's with real good cooperation. Geographic dispersion, security or other governmental/law enforcement obligations may seriously hamper it as well.