p2pnet - rss feed: Corruption and alliances
p2pnet.net News View:- This morning the Ottawa Business Journal published an article describing the latest misinformation from the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST). CAAST claims that 36 per cent of the software used in Canada last year was "pirated". In their own press releases they suggest that "CAAST has worked closely with its counterparts in the recording and motion picture industries in a collaborative effort to help enforce strict legislation regarding copyright infringement".
It’s important to put these self-called "software piracy studies" and related lobbying efforts in their proper context. These incumbent software vendors, such as their counterparts in the recording and motion picture industries, are recognizing that their largest competition comes not from fellow members using the same business models, but from innovators using modern methods to develop, distribute and fund software. These studies aren’t aimed at indicating the number of people who are violating their business model: rather, they lump together these violations with people who have chosen alternatives.
CAAST members are using a methodology sometimes called "software manufacturing" because they create, distribute and fund software in an outdated way that treats software similar to manufactured goods such as hardware.
Alternatives such as Free/Libre and Open Source Software better harness the unique features of software, and produce software and make money without many of the side-effects of "software manufacturing" - including so-called "software theft".
One of the CAAST members, Microsoft, has been forced to admit the largest competitor for its operating systems comes from the free market of vendors who create, distribute, and support GNU/Linux. The largest competitors to Microsoft’s browser and webserver are from Mozilla.org and Apache.org, and the large free market of vendors who support those products.
Apache.org represents nearly 70% of the webserver market.
It’s been suggested that OpenOffice.org will, in the future, have a similar effect on sales of Microsoft Office.The methodologies used by these studies are indirect as they have no direct way to count the number of people using their software. They count the number of computers shipped and "estimate" the demand for software from their members. They then count the number of software packages shipped, subtract the two, and declare the difference as "software piracy".
Having these vendors or IDC estimate the demand for their software based on computer shipped is going to be about as accurate as having political party leaders or their election teams estimating the demand for seats based on knowing the total number of seats in the parliament. We’d never accept this misinformation in politics, so why do so many media writers accept this ideology from incumbent software vendors?
CAAST and their allies in the recording and motion picture industry aren’t calling for changes to PCT (patent, copyright, trademark and related laws) which support a free market and consumer choice. Instead, they’re calling for aggressive protectionist policies to protect them from competition.
If a political party were trying to change election laws to favor their re-election, we’d instantly recognize this as corruption. But people still seem to not recognize what CAAST and its allies are up to.
My company is a support company for one of the alternatives, namely Free/Libre and Open Source Software. As an alternative to business cards, I’ve handed out hundreds of copies of TheOpenCD.org which contains free (libre and gratis) alternatives to CAAST member software that can be installed on Microsoft Windows.
Each person who installed one of these alternatives and didn’t bother buying the CAAST member version would have been "estimated" to have been a "pirate" by this study.
Each computer I’ve bought would have been estimated to have CAAST member software on it, but no software from these competitors would ever have been installed.
See also:
- CAAST misinformation - how do they count?
- Content industries on slippery slope with demand for blank media levy
- “Make it legal: don’t litigate, use creative licensing” campaign
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).]
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