BSA 2010 Piracy Report: $58.8 Billion 361
Glyn Moody writes "The annual BSA report on software piracy is out, with even bigger numbers: 'The commercial value of software piracy grew 14 percent globally last year to a record total of $58.8 billion.' Yes, they're using the old 'commercial value' trick: 'The commercial value of pirated software is the value of unlicensed software installed in a given year, as if it had been sold in the market.' Except, of course, that the main reason users in developing countries — the main focus of the report — resort to piracy is because they can't afford Western-style pricing. It's also fun to see the BSA trotting out the old 'reducing piracy would generate lots of new jobs and taxes for local governments' — except that it doesn't, because the money not paid for software licences does not disappear, but is just spent elsewhere in the local economy."
reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs (Score:5)
Getting rid of the BSA would do wonders for local economies around the globe. If we didn't have this grandstanding of false piracy people could get on with their lives instead of watching as government lobbied by the BSA bends over for them and does their bidding, going directly against the desires of their constituents.
Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it could be argued that FULL cooperation with the BSA would generate the most local jobs, as companies would then be forced to shift to open source to avoid the expense and hassle of complying with proprietary licensing.
Let's be honest - if it became impossible to run pirated versions of MS-Windows and MS-Office tomorrow, this would be the year of the linux desktop, and any money that would have been spent on licensing could be spent locally instead, on deploying open solutions, training, and customizing.
So, if you really want to support open source and your local economy, report software piracy today!
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I want to spread free software and encourage its use as much as anyone else, but doing something I find morally sickening such as reporting software "piracy" is not the right way to go about it. Free software is about your ability to share the software, if you attack people for doing exactly that - sharing the software, you're doing free software no good service.
Reporting license violators (whether they are in violation of proprietary licenses or the GPL or some other license) is not immoral when the end user has alternatives.
Or are you going to argue that people can infringe the GPL or a Creative Commons license because "Free software is about your ability to share the software"?
The various "free" licenses are about much more than just sharing - they may include requiring to acknowledge the original creator, making public any improvements or modifications (eit
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Those pesky Boy Scouts...
Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
confuse and obfuscate public policy
You talk of "stealing" software... seems their obfuscation is working.
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That's a relatively new definition, and it shows that the BSA brainwashing is working. Remember, dictionaries don't dictate meaning, they catalog how words are being used.
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No he would say, "he copied my paper!" That is the correct word, because it is accurate.
Re:Why it is stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet their calculation of how much piracy cost is still inaccurate and arbitrary at best. If Adobe decided that Photoshop should cost $150,000 and I decided to pirate it, it doesn't mean they lost $150,000 in software sales. Simply because I don't even make that much and could never afford the product at that price no matter what.
But what is also missing from the equation is the benefit Adobe gains if I *do* pirate their software. If I am a home user, and I pirate Photoshop, and I learn the software and become quite good with it, and if I land a job doing graphics, my employer will ask what software I want to use. I will more likely say "Photoshop" because that is what I know. Thus, in that instance, they actually got a sale they probably wouldn't have otherwise, because I would have just learned Gimp or some other free graphics editor, and just suggested to use that instead.
Sound impossible? I just described my situation exactly.
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>>>stealing - to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
I disagree with this definition. You have a right to create, but you don't have a natural right to get credit/acknowledgement for the idea. "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself
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One of the definitions of stealing is:
to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
Ah, but as you may notice this definition is invalid if you give acknowledgement. This is about quoting without citation, to take what someone else has produced as your own. Then yes, informally we say "He stole my song."
There is no obfuscation here from the BSA on the simple fact that copyright infringement is a class of theft.
No, you can't take any random definition and conclude it's a legal definition. Otherwise "to steal a kiss" would be a class of theft.
Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs (Score:4, Informative)
Copying isn't stealing. Theft is not copyright infringement from a legal point of view either so the law agrees with me on this one.
Would you consider it wrong to replicate a loaf of bread?
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That depends - did any other bread exist before that first loaf? Did you replicate it with the owner's consent?
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Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people. Look at what you are doing, your actions.
English Translation: Ignore the only thing that matters so I can keep spewing this crap.
I don't own Ubuntu, nor the linux kernel, I use them all the time. I even downloaded it via bittorrent!
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Don't make the mistake of looking at what it does to other people.
But that is the whole point of law.
Nevertheless, it is the act of taking something which does not belong to you which makes it theft.
Nothing was taken though. If I make a copy of something, be it a car, brownie, program, song, or whatever, the original is still right where the owner left it. What, exactly, did I take other than the brownie which was too tasty to pass up? Certainly not the idea as the original creator still has that as well.
You can argue that I deprived the original's owner of potential income that he could have requested either in return for my making a copy or for a copy he had made
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Sorry, pirating software is not stealing software. The premise behind calling it "stealing" is that, if you did not pirate the software, you would have paid for it. That is so demonstrably false I don't know where you're coming from. I know a guy who has both software he purchased legitimately (Portal 2, Minecraft) and software he has pirated (Adobe CS, Comsol). It's obvious that no sales were lost in any of the pirated cases.
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Well I guess we should all just go to your place of work and 'pirate' whatever it is you do for a living. Yar!!!
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>>>He is using someone's work without their permission, period, end of story. I don't care what you call it, it is morally wrong
So?
I bet you sped in your car to work this morning (driving 65 in a 55 zone)(or 70+ in a 65 zone), and not only is that morally wrong, but also deadly to other people. ""Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"
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I work from home
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Re:reducing the BSA would generate the most jobs (Score:4, Funny)
Can we have an equivalent to Godwin's Law so that, as soon as someone says "end of story", they automatically lose the argument?
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I thought that was implied.
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Well, in My country the constitution states you are grated a limited monopoly, the limited part being time. The reason being, MOST founders reasoned people who create things might like to get paid for their ideas. Article I, second 8. It's not an amendment, it's not a law... it's the freaking constitution.
So yea, I do use binary computers without paying Atansoff. But you don't use Asus motherboards without paying me for my ideas regarding delamination of multi layered motherboards.
Put up or shut up, I l
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> Wow. People can justify anything, I guess.
You mean like your own LYING.
It's so funny how LIARS like to try and take the moral high ground here.
Playing fast and loose with terms is simply dishonest. Anyone claiming moral superiority or trying to smear the ethics of others should really get their own nonsense straight first. Theft and copyright infringement two entirely different things both in the law and traditional common practice. This why it's such a big "problem". It is very unintuitive to quite a
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So you'd be OK with calling it software raping, and sentencing software rapists to 10 years per count and giving some of them chemical castration so they wouldn't rape software again? If you really don't care what we call it, fine, you don't care how you use words or whether they actually mean anything, so why are you joining a discussion by starting out saying you don't bother to speak truth and no one should bother to read your opinion? .
There are ways to use someone's work that don't need their permissi
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The radical arguments presented here mean that Facebook has every right to sell personal information of their customers because simply because they have copies of it.
I'm pretty sure that's their business model.
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When you steal, you're depriving someone of the thing you steal.
Copying something doesn't deprive the original owner of it. Unauthorised copying is only illegal because our forefathers believed publishers needed a time-limited monopoly on artistic and literary works in order to publish them (and also because of the political maneuvering of said publishers). If that assumption is mostly wrong, there's no reason to restrict copying.
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You made the mistake of using the term "stealing" instead of "infringing copyright". Those on slashdot who have probably never written a line of code in their life will latch on to this like ticks, and avoid the real issue - that infringing copyright costs software developers money. The BSA may exaggerate the amounts, many infringers may not have bought the software if they had to pay, but some sales and some income is undoubtably lost.
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No kidding, I stirred the hornets’ nest. Well I can play that smart guy game. So 'pirating' isn't stealing because it's really 'copying' and idea which doesn't exist. Well the chemicals in my brain I real, and the ideas they create are used to create real things.
So how about all these smart guys show what they’ve created. I'll start [uspto.gov]. As you can see, this 'not real' idea is used in the very real automotive industry, and generates very real millions for my former employer. It's kind of nice to
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>>>Nobody should have paid me anything.
That's correct. I'm glad you're finally understanding our viewpoint. Perhaps a LIMITED monopoly of 14 years would be acceptable, so you could useful income from your anti-rust idea, but no more. You no more deserve a multi-decade monopoly than Comcast does over local neighborhoods.
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Well that's exactly what the constitution says I get, a limited monopoly. I never said pirated software is a lost sale, in fact I said the opposite in a manner of speaking. What I really said was just because it's not a lost sale doesn't make it right to take it.
The information I posted can take you to everything I've ever done. You can rip me to shreds, I have opened myself here to anything. Yet nobody else who thinks ideas are worthless has posted one sentence of original thought. I bet all these fre
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Citation necessary. The marginal cost of copies after the first is precisely zero for software. Same goes for digital music and photos. Infringement costs developers money the same way that refusing to buy the product costs them money. Which is to say that it doesn't cost them any money because it was never money they would have gotten in the first place. More often than not it's money that doesn't even exist.
You can't say that some sales and income were undoubtedly lost without some sort of citation or evi
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>>>some sales and some income is undoubtably lost.
Yes but only a few million, not billions.
Thomas Jefferson considered freedom from copyright and patent lawsand other monopolies to be of similar importance to freedom of speech, religion, and the press. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:
"I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our
new constitution by nine states. It is a good
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Tomas Jefferson also owned slaves, and thought the wealth of America was in its agriculture and not its manufacturing. I know a bit of history too.
Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code or had an original thought in your life. Nothing is stopping anyone from making their own Photoshop and giving it away to the world for free. It's called GIMP.
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many infringers may not have bought the software if they had to pay, but some sales and some income is undoubtably lost.
You ignore the sales that are gained though.
Consider this: College kid pirates Adobe Photoshop. Learns how to use it, becomes a graphic designer who uses photoshop professionally and purchases a copy for use professionally. That is a sale that was created by piracy. Or maybe the kid who pirated Photoshop ends up talking to friends about it who switch from FooBar image editing software to Photoshop. Then when both become professionals and actually have money, not only might they purchase copies, but they may
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>>>The BSA isn't right, nor is it wrong. I might understand stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, *might*, but stealing software because you can't afford it doesn't fly with me
>>>
How about stealing software because it's worthless trash? Like the Limewire I pirated, discovered it was junk, and erased it. Saved myself ~$80 (versus my niece who foolishly bought it legally).
Same with movies/songs. I've saved tons of cash by NOT buying shitty crap like Transformers 2, Spiderman 3,
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Just because it's not a loss doesn't me you have the right to it. That's like saying "Hey, he wasn't using that car, so why does he care that I stole it."
All I'm saying is that the BSA misrepresents the monetary losses by claiming pirated software is a lost sale. But that does not make it right to steal.
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>>>Just because it's not a loss doesn't me you have the right to it.
Likewise neither do you have a right to a monopoly over your book, or Comcast to a monopoly over CATV, or Microsoft a monopoly over PCs, or Standard Oil a monopoly over oil wells, et cetera.
- Nature does not give the right to a monopoly.
Your ideas, by natural right, belong to everyone.
- The protection of your ideas is a limited-time PRIVILEGE granted by society, not a right.
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By possessing and using a copy of Foobar, you have to some decreased demand for Foobar in the marketplace. You are also arguably making use of Foobar without paying for it, hence producing higher quality output at lower cost because you've found illegal ways of reducing your costs. You make it harder for someone to compete using software they paid for, simply because they have a legitimate cost basis for their product. If this software is superior to free alternatives, then you are also illegitimately reduc
$58.8 billion? (Score:2)
Man, I am WAY behind. Everyone needs to pitch in and do their part.
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Man, I am WAY behind. Everyone needs to pitch in and do their part.
I've paid my $8.77 - have you?
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The GP is right, and for my part I haven't pirated enough software either. We all need to do our part. I for one do not want to be cowed by those thuggish oafs.
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$58.8 billion means that only one person downloaded a pirated copy of anything in 2010.
Tell a lie often enough... (Score:2)
...and it becomes truth, especially when you use the media to squelch the real truth.
Excellent plan! (Score:2)
If everyone starts downloading ten times as much software as they can use, we'll have bankrupted the entire industry in a year!
Broken Window Fallacy (Score:2)
Broken Window Fallacy Fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
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>>>Broken Window Fallacy
Cash for Clunkers comes to mind.
As another poster remarks, imagine if the Boy was PAID by the glazier to go-round breaking perfectly functional windows? The glazier would be a vandalist and thief.
That is, in essence, what Congress is guilty of doing. I watched on my evening news as perfectly-good, rust-free, and less than 10 year old cars were crushed. For what purpose? To make GM and the bankers slightly richer.
Quit making excuses (Score:3, Insightful)
So that legitimizes taking someone else's work and not compensating them for it, right? Because the world runs on dreams and kindness and everything should just be given away.
Guess what, someone, usually dozens or hundreds of people, worked to produce the software and they want to be paid for their work. Just because you don't think the price is justified doesn't entitle you to take their work and not compensate them.
And yes, I'm using the word entitled because that is the overwhelming opinion on this site and others that people are somehow entitled to take something which isn't theirs and not have to pay a dime for it.
Maybe you think it's funny or sticking it to the man, but you wouldn't be laughing if it was your stuff being taken and you didn't get paid for it.
And don't bother bringing up how software isn't "real" goods or services. That the cost to produce it is negligible. There are still ongoing costs associated with producing and distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?
While the BSA numbers are certainly overstated, the fact remains people are stealing someone else's work and trying to justify that theft by claiming, "But they live in a poor country and can't afford it so it's ok to steal" is bullshit.
You want to code and give your stuff away, that's fine. It's your stuff. Don't try claiming what you think should be done with your stuff applies to someone else's stuff.
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[...]distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?
Uh, if people pirate software wouldn't that mean that they're not straining the producer's servers?
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You want to code and give your stuff away, that's fine. It's your stuff. Don't try claiming what you think should be done with your stuff applies to someone else's stuff.
The Encylopaedia Nobullshitica defines "Stuff" as "that which has mass and takes up space". And therein lies the problem with your whole blathering bullshit rant. No matter how you slice it, people who can't afford your software not paying for your software is not a lost sale, and that is the statement you are arguing against, as the summary does not make any statements about whether these people are entitled to this software or not.
Come down off your fucking soapbox. We need the space to flame the next foo
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And don't bother bringing up how software isn't "real" goods or services. That the cost to produce it is negligible. There are still ongoing costs associated with producing and distributing the software, even via downloads. Or do you think the servers are running on puppy farts?
That's why it's better to release your software on BitTorrent. The customer takes care of the distribution themselves.
For products which are funded by advertising, like TV shows, this makes even more sense. The networks are already giving away TV shows for free over the airwaves; releasing them on BitTorrent is just more efficient.
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For products which are funded by advertising, like TV shows, this makes even more sense. The networks are already giving away TV shows for free over the airwaves; releasing them on BitTorrent is just more efficient.
I don't understand: if the product is funded by advertising, how are the networks going to get paid if they release it on BitTorrent?
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What you're getting at is exactly what bothers me. The reasoning of lots of people seems to be "I want something; therefore I am entitled to it." It's a child's argument.
What is the difference between the idea of wanting to breathe and taking a breath, and wanting to listen to a song and downloading the mp3?
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I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.
-- Vincent Van Gogh, 1888
Van Gogh's famous prediction was correct, if somewhat arrogant, since his pictures became extremely valuable after his death.
But something has changed, and now we are told that the pictures are in fact worth much less than the cost of the materials. They are, after all, just information, and according to piracy advocates, the cost of producing the information is limited to the cost of copying it. Never mind the cost of R&D, never mind the time spent getting the artwork just right.. it's not "stuff", it
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You know, there are a lot of other types of "worth", not just monetary.
A pacemaker literally saves someone's life. Does that mean the price should be everything the patient has and/or can manage to cough up?
Just because someone gets a copy of something without paying the official price for it doesn't mean it's devoid of any kind of value.
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>>>Never mind the cost of R&D, never mind the time spent getting the artwork just right.. it's not "stuff", it's just information, and if you can copy it in a second, then that's all it's worth.
On Ebay I recently complained about a customer that bought a brand-new videogame, swiped it with a beat-up scratched disc, and then returned it. Ebay responded "That's just the cost of business. We try to protect our sellers but in this case we have to follow the law which sides with the buyer." I'm s
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There is outcry at every GPL violation because someone else's work has been appropriated, and they get nothing for all the time they put into making it.
Someone doesn't understand the GPL. You can't violate it simply by appropriating something and not paying the author. Whether or not payment is accepted is not part of the GPL you can or you can't. A violation of the GPL has nothing to do with compensating the person who developed it, it's about keeping the work open. So yea, let's be angry about the license violation involving keeping software open and let's not care about the license violation that deprives the public domain via tremendously long copyrigh
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The point is that the value of information is not the same as the cost of copying it.
That's something that Van Gogh understood, but piracy advocates choose not to. I thought the quotation illustrated this quite nicely, since it is all about the value of intellectual property. The paint and canvas only became valuable when Van Gogh added his IP. And yet, according to piracy advocates, that IP is just as worthless as any other IP, whether it's run out of copyright (as it now has) or whether it was painted ye
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I think that if you want to charge for information that is fine. But you have no right to restrict my use of the information after the sale, to do so infringes my 1st amendment constitutional rights which state that congress shall make no law against my freedom of speech.
The fallacy of the "information owner" idea is that you have actually created something unique, and of your own mind. Without society, your mind would not exist. The form and structure of the information, the words, concepts, framewor
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>>>Guess what, someone, usually dozens or hundreds of people, worked to produce the software and they want to be paid for their work
They have already been paid
(hourly or weekly wages).
So stop bitching.
>>>Maybe you think it's funny or sticking it to the man, but you wouldn't be laughing if it was your stuff being taken and you didn't get paid for it.
Wouldn't bother me.
I would share the same opinion as the Author of the "Walking Dead" comic book: The amount of money I earn, even minus the l
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This article is just more entitlement bullcrap. If you can't afford it, you don't punish the company by taking it anyway, you punish them by not buying it at all. If you take it illegal
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What you say is all true. But the fact remains that people are not entitled to software. Copyright holders have the right to charge exorbitant rates to everyone (and suffer the consequent low sales); copyright holders have the right to charge low rates; and copyright holders have the right to charge exorbitant rates to those who can pay for them and low rates to those who can't. But it is the choice of the copyright holder. Just because something would be useful to you doesn't mean that you can have it at the price you're able to pay.
What you say is all true today but it wasn't always so and what kept a volume of books from being produced before copyright wasn't the lack of copyright but the lack of printing presses and literacy. Which I gather is a sort of chicken/egg/roosterr thing that is probably among the most studied of history, so I won't try to make insightful commentary about it in particular... but the point is that copyright is for the purpose of limiting use of works. We've seen time and again that all art is derivative, so
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There's nothing wrong with "the people"â"in the sense of "society"â"deciding it's okay to copy music, software, or other digitally-stored works. The problem is when persons unilaterally decide that it's okay.
The problem with that idea is that "the people" making a decision is the same as a whole bunch of people unilaterally making the decision. Indeed, a majority of them. Because we are not a hive; we are individuals; people keep on thinking and talking and making more people and more germane to this conversation making decisions even when you are not looking at them.
The people cannot decide anything without individuals deciding that thing. You would have stasis.
Hell, even in developed countries (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the copying of commercial software is done by people who can't afford it. You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.
I'm not saying that copying doesn't result in some lost revenue. I'm quite sure that there are sales that would be made if copying was impossible, but aren't because it is. However it is not 100% of copied software, not even close.
I'd imagine the more expensive the software in question, the lower the loss overall. For a $1 phone app, sure I can believe that a significant number of people would buy it, if copying it wasn't possible. For a multi-thousand dollar software package? I bet it is extremely low. The places that can afford it don't mind and want to be legit, the people that copy can't afford it period.
This BS inflated figures don't help anyone, particularly because I think people are starting to wise up. They are realizing that if the numbers really were as big as the anti-piracy orgs want to claim, it would be a real problem.
Autodesk (3ds Max) is not the real victim (Score:2)
You'll get students that want to play with 3DSMax or something but can't really swing the $3,500 asking price so they'll download it. That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.
Students can get student discounts - especially if their area of education actually deals with e.g. 3D content production.
But more importantly - every time somebody downloads 3ds Max "to play with", that means they may -not- be downloading, for example, Blender to pl
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Have you seen the student rates on some of those bits of software? It's not unusual for companies to ask hundreds of dollars for the student version. Now, if they let the students use it for a couple quarters before paying, that would be one thing, but paying that kind of money without knowing if he's going to like the class is just greedy. It's great when corporations are so short sited as to gouge students because they might not have a chance to gouge them later.
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exactly. As I posted up above, you are disturbing the demand part of the price decision point. That demand doesn't only affect the price of the software in question, it drives the development of alternatives. Matlab is expensive, so there is a demand for Octave. if legit organizations could pirate matlab and get the job done, there would be a lot fewer developers, and we probably wouldn't have Octave.
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> That is NOT a lost sale, if it was impossible to copy, they'd simply do without because they haven't the money.
That is the key statement: pirated copies do not equal lost sales. People who really use the software usually require support, and they will by the product and the support. Pirated copies are often just used to mess around, or to impress. So the numbers are hugely inflated.
It is a bit like calling everybody who didn't buy you product a potential customer. Yes, that may be true for some def
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>The student isn't the target market for that piece of software.
Actually, yes, yes he is.
You learn it while in school and then you buy it professionally when you're working in the industry, or you get your employer to buy it.
Why the fuck do you think that Autocad has the market share that it has? It's certainly not superior to the other CAD packages out there. It's that everybody and his brother pirates the hell out of it when he is 14 and uses it through University and that's the only CAD package he k
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So you're agreeing that the parent is right: that student's copy of 3DSMax is NOT a lost sale?
really? (Score:2)
1) Determine how much PC software was deployed during the year.
2) Determine how much was paid for or otherwise legally acquired during the year.
3) Subtract one from the other to get the amount of unlicensed software.
Who hear makes and sells software and or hardware?
Did they ask you?
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Nah, I'm sure it's much more scientific than that. You need to make an advanced formula that takes into account the substitution rate, the market segmentation, and the regression towards the mean, prove it works given some reasonableassumption, and finally apply it to the numbers you pulled out of a hat.
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Software DRM knob turned to 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see Ballmer's previous threats to crank WGA and OGA to 11.
I'd love to see DRM schemes that turn computers with illegitimate copies of software into smoking heaps.
It'll never happen, though. Copyright infringement is too important to the industry incumbents to actually stop it. File sharing locks out alternatives, both commercial and free. Why pay for an alternative when you can crack the market leader for free? If the world suddenly discovered there was software besides Windows, Microsoft Office, Autocad, and Photoshop, there would be more competition.
Ending piracy would end much of the market distortion that favors the incumbents at the expense of the rest.
Do it, guys, if you have any balls.
--
BMO
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If it's done by the same people who did WGA we're in for a ton of fun. Last time I checked WGA was said to have a rate of false positives somewhere in the neighborhood of 97.7%.
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Buying a Naked PC? You must be a pirate! (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years back, when last I looked, the BSAA (local Australian tentacle/surrogate of the BSA) were treating each PC sold as representing a certain quantity of licensed software that would be in use. They then compared this with some software license sales figures (the accuracy of which is another question), and if there were more deemed licenses in use through new PC sales than there were actual license sales, (guess what! there were!!) then that was their damning evidence that teh piratez were stealing Christmas.
This meant that some 40 staff desktops and 120 teaching laboratory computers at my workplace (a university CS department) which were bought with no OS license and installed with Debian, actually contributed to the BSAA's frothy-mouthed argument that rampant piracy was costing Australia many quality local jobs employing drones to process purchases of software produced overseas by US companies... that incidentally booked most of their profits via subsidiaries based in Ireland, thanks to its low low rate of corporate tax at that time.
So there you have it:
- I am a pirate
- my work was full of piracy
- you probably are a pirate too
because I/they/you have the temerity to buy machines with no OS to run free operating systems and free applications.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd hate to hear what they think of those of us that take our OS license with us with computer upgrades. I'm still using the same one I got with a purchase back in 2004.
Better idea... (Score:2)
Hey BSA get THIS though your thick numbskull! Copying software isn't theft unless the thief: (A)would have paid for the software had the copy not been made available to him, or (B)sold the copies on the black market for whatever he could have got for it. In case A: your loss is ZERO if the copier would not have bought your overpriced software had he not gotten the copy. In case B: your loss is only what the illegally copied software was sold for (assuming the buyer would NOT have bought your overpriced
I'm gonna be famous! (Score:3)
BSA (Score:4, Interesting)
Bought software is used differently (Score:2)
colonialism 2.0 (Score:2)
First round of colonies gave us resources and free labour to develop our societies and tech.
Second round, the colonies have moved to the IP world which is owned completely by the west due to the advantage from the first round.
While I dont think theres any point backdating morality, things were different during the first looting, theres no excuse for the 2. except might is right.
but.. but... (Score:2)
Some guy in China, who makes $100 per year, pirated our $500 piece of software. We LOST $500!
That's not necessarily piracy (Score:2)
If you make the laws you decide what illegal 'piracy' is. These third world countries are only pirating if it is illegal to copy the software in their country because US copyright and trade laws don't apply in other countries any more than their laws apply here. At some point one of these governments is going to realize that they can simply nationalize software just like they nationalize oil companies and collect all the cash themselves. It is only a desire to maintain good relations with the US that could
The Bullshit Spreaders of America strike again... (Score:2)
Delusional people still delusional. (Score:2)
News at 11.
What is news, is the fact that governments use this as an excuse to accept bribes from industry and try to justify laws using those ridiculous numbers.
SCADA etc (Score:3)
So, if a two classes of 30 students each install each a pirated copy of a SCADA system, estimate sales value $250,000 each, to make their final work at the dorms/home and not in a computer lab, and without "student version" nag, that means the industry has lost $15mln to that school year alone?
Because surely the students would definitely buy the program if they could not pirate it.
Re:stealing (Score:4, Interesting)
If I write a piece of software and it gets 100 paying users and zero pirates, I'm no better off than if I get 100 paying users and 1000 pirates. Count the paying users, not the pirates.
Re:stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
>If I write a piece of software and it gets 100 paying users and zero pirates, I'm no better off than if I get 100 paying users and 1000 pirates. Count the paying users, not the pirates.
If you write a piece of software and you get 100 paying customers and 1000 warez kiddies, you have 1000 future customers when they need to buy something for work.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
True.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How would you feel if you spent 3 years writing a software so that you could feed your family and 2 weeks after you release it some one starts giving it away for free ?
Probably about like I feel when I buy a CD, and someone claims I accepted a EULA I could only see after the sale, then claims I don't have the right to sell the used CD because what I really own is a licence, Then claims I can't copy the CD to my own computer, and they'll throw me under the jail if I break the DMCA trying.