Taxes good, Free/Libre software bad, according to the BSA
An article by Jordan Golson for The Industry Standard talks about the release of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) 2007 State Piracy Study, which claimed that one in five pieces of software in use in the United States was unlicensed.
Before anyone worries too much for those poor BSA members, read Lies, Damned lies, and IIPA/BSA/etc statistics. In this article I offered some details on the flawed methodology used by the IDC to come up with these numbers. The reality is that they aren’t accurately accounting for people choosing alternatives to BSA member software, such as the growing usage of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).
They use these same bogus statistics in their promotion of Bill C-61 and other backward-facing legislative reforms.
Bill C-61 would disproportionately cause harm to competitors to the BSA, suggesting that their lobbying is more about ongoing anti-competitive practises and not about reducing software copyright infringement.
The press releases you see from the BSA are laughable, but not funny given there are bureaucrats and politicians that take their silliness seriously.
The claims in the recent press release included the following:
Software piracy also has ripple effects in local communities. The lost revenues to the wider group of software distributors and service providers ($11.4 billion) would have been enough to hire 54,000 high tech industry workers, while the lost state and local tax revenues ($1.7 billion) would have been enough to build 100 middle schools or 10,800 affordable housing units, or hire nearly 25,000 experienced police officers.
I guess any money not paid to BSA members just disappears and is not spent on other things in the economy that also involve jobs and taxes. In the real world we know that money not spent on software will more likely be spent on other things which are taxed the same — or even higher, given how BSA likes to also lobby to get software taxed at a lower rate than other products or services.
I know that people choosing legally lower cost software such as FLOSS are included as “piracy” in these studies. I guess my supporting FLOSS (both commercially and as an individual) could be blamed for their not being enough money to adequately equip the Canadian military in Afghanistan. I guess this makes me a terrorist sympathizer, by the BSA “logic”.
Yawn.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He`s also the CLUE policy coordinator and p2pnet contributing editor.]
July 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Russell, hippie style FLOSS advocates like you ARE terrist to the agenda these people have! you probably jsut burn all your money that you do not spend on licenses for their great programms. Next we know you advocate not buying food anymore and grow your own vegetables instead robbing that way even more taxes now also from the farming industry!
July 19th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
> July 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
FAIL. GTFO.
July 19th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
<p>hippie style FLOSS advocates? Most of the FLOSS types I know are pretty right-wing thinkers.
<P>Ya — growing our own food is evil. In fact, doing anything for ourselves deprives someone of a job. I guess without the inheritance from daddy it is hard to do nothing and yet still pay all those people who actually work for a living…
July 20th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
” > July 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
FAIL. GTFO. ”
LOL
Someones sarcasm meter is broken … heh.
Most normal people get the joke fritz
July 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am
Please explain why “piracy” is a big major problem.
As far as I am concerned, this is a business model problem.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
With the money I saved by installing Open Office at my 3 computers at home I will feed my family for three months.
So, freeware creates agriculture and food industry jobs.
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
“Please explain why âpiracyâ is a big major problem.
As far as I am concerned, this is a business model problem.”
While I agree that there are trivial business model solutions for software copyright infringement, this is not the same for all forms of copyrighted works. One of the failings of much of the copyright debate is the mistaken belief that all human creativity exists in the identical economic conditions, which is so trivially false. What is true of functional works like productivity software or educational/scientific/medical/legal/etc textbooks/papers/journals is not at all true for music, movies, television, which is different than fiction books, which is different than…
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Russell McOrmond, you are right. This is how that got to be.
A bunch of pigs didn’t like the water in the pond. It was too clean, tasteless. The pigs got together and got the pond owners to make the water dirty, in exchange for some bacon. The problem now is that the water is too dirty for all but the pigs, who love the pond the way it is. Also, the pond owners ate all the bacon and are always asking for more from the pigs. The pigs, that don’t even care if the water is fit for humans who own the pond are happy to comply.
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
dred, don’t be to harsh to reader’s write. probably his adblock/noscript extension jsut blog images from that server which made him misunderstood me
http://www.p2pnet.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
The un-licensed or illegally used software can be prevented by using a reliable licensing scheme and activating software online.
By doing so, you know which machine a license run on and you can disable the software it you think it is used illegally.
September 13th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
good stuff, following with interest, helping me firm up my travel plans.