There are two types of business customers for software: Large organizations with many workstations and employees, small organizations with few workstations or employees.

Large organizations buy the software they use and there are several reasons for this: They need the support that comes with purchased software and to avoid the loss of trust of their employees. They also avoid being blackmailed by fired employees that know that pirated software is used by the enterprise. Sometimes they are simply ignorant of open source freeware.

In this market there is very little loss for the creator of sold software because of software piracy. Because this market is so solid Bill Gates is the richest man in the world.

Then there is the small business and home computer market. Here the tendency is to use much illegally copied and legally copied or downloaded freeware. Clearly the legally copied and downloaded freeware cannot be counted as a loss in sales for by Bill’s economists.

Admittedy there is much copying of for-sale software but this copying may actually increase the sale of for-sale software. Bill’s economists do not realize this when they calculate losses because their too simple mathematical models were made by the economists themselves and they are not professional statisticians or mathematicians.

This is how it all works giving a real life example.

Joe istalls an illegally copied Microsoft Office in his personal computer at home. Because Joe likes the program he decides to use it also in the small family operated company he owns. As time goes by the company grows and Joe needs to hire non family employees. Joe then buys the program he is familiar with, Microsoft Office and Bill Gates get a little richer. As Joe’s company grows he buys more and more copies of Microsoft Office and Bill Gates getes richer and richer. It all started with piracy.

Bill Gates should be thankfull of piracy because it makes him richer. It has made him the richest person in the world.

But Bill Gates’s economists tell him that piracy represent loss of sales and that makes Bill mad, since he is not satisfied with just being the richest man in the world. He wants to own the world. Bill Gates does not realize how much piracy actually adds to his bank account because his economists talk too much with the Alliance staff and with lawyers that have never sold anything other than their overpriced services to sucker enterprises that have more money than is possible to spend.

Being that Bill has so much money, he then foolishly spent some of his money to fight piracy.

He listened to his foolish economists, got his friends at the government to put the FBI into action. The FBI, alleging that they were fighting terrorism raided homes to clean all software from hard disks and arrest the terrorist copiers and downloaders.

Guess what?

The pirates that eventually purchase Bill’s software switched to freeware in droves. Bill Gates becames poorer.

One day Bill realized that he destroyed his businees by stopping piracy. Thus Bill became a promoter of freeware. Everybody switched to freeware. Commercial software was too risky and its purchase only made the unfriendly Bll richer than any human deserved to be. Linux and Open Office took over.

End of story. End of Microsoft.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Because of the artificially inflated high prices charged by your members, I was unable to afford a modern operating system for my computer. I was also unable to afford the accepted word processor for that operating system.

Because I could not afford this OS and word processing package, I was unable to write a resume that had a professional appearance.

Because my resume did not have a professional appearance, I was unable to get the good paying job I applied for. This, in fact, by my investigation, had nothing to do with the fact that I was unqualified for the position.

This all stems from the fact that I was unable to afford your member’s software, because they charge prices that prohibit the average user from purchasing it.

Therfore, please submit a check for USD $1,550,000. This is a simple calculation of the lost wages I have suffered at the hands of your members. ($50,000 USD per year * 30 years.)

I have decided to be generous, and not ask for compounded, inflation adjusted wages, as this sum appears to be well over $83 billion.

I await your check.

Regards,
Bryan

Of course the larger the amount of money “lost” to piracy, the bigger the amounts the companies can get away with claiming on their tax. Which is why piracy always has such huge numbers attached to it.

Another reason they really don’t want to succeed at stopping piracy is they’d lose their jobs.

Does the BSA really think that everyone who might have gotten Photoshop CS2 off a torrent or a warez site was going to shell out several hundred dollars for it? More likely they were going to wait until Photoshop Elements went on sale at Staples (with a rebate too) so the end cost was in the $39 to $49 range. That is, unless they decided to buy the $19 shareware photo editor or they really only wanted to turn their pix 90 degrees and get rid of the red eye and found freeware utilities that met their needs. Not everyone with a digital camera is going to be doing 4 color separations for pre-press proofs.

It’s a good thing that the BSA isn’t a publically traded entity, because if the employees of the BSA did all of their math like that, they’d all wind up in the SarBox penetentiary for 475,995 years. That’s 5 years for EACH mistake made, assuming consecutive sentences, no parole, and lots of bad behavior, the worst case scenario. They deserve nothing less.