With its “Five Concrete Steps” the BSA (and one assumes the rest of the nearly 100 world-wide copyright enforcement groups) once again focuses on the symptoms of piracy, not the disease itself. These powerful groups seem to thrive on enforcement, legislation, litigation, and reactive–punitive–options.

Someone seems to be missing the simple message that the high costs of much of the software being pirated reduces the number of legitimate buyers. Want to lower the rate of piracy by 10% - lower the price of operating systems and software to match the economy of the specific regional target audience. Or maybe produce software that actually functions as the average user wants it to function. Or you could produce products that are not bug-ridden. Or…

Any of you software publishers ever heard of the Big Mac Index?

I know, I know… It’ll never work. Punish and penalize are much more profitable than educate and support. If piracy rates seriously dropped the enforcement industry players wouldn’t be able to enjoy such incredible income from their settlements. Why does the best form of customer relationship management seem to be comprised of suing your customers on a regular basis?

My real fear–and it should be yours, too–is that these BSA “studies” are being quoted around the globe as definitive–even accurate. They are being cited by everyone from news services to legislators–and laws are being passed based on these fantasy figures.

al plastow
biztechnet.org

I own/operate a lot of computers (Many desktops in my home office, many more servers as I co-manage an ISP), and not a single one of these computers have any “software manufacturing” (pay-per) software on it.

If you don’t want to pay outrageous prices I recommend you switch to FLOSS which is high quality software that you are entitled/encouraged to legally share.

File formats are the second hand smoke of the Internet age, and the more people that use FLOSS software and the standard file format the better it will be for everyone worldwide.

Now the question is whether I’m different, or the norm. Personally I like to think I’m savy, but I believe most people who have an interest in computers are of similar mind these days. Pirating software is what made programs like Photoshop the norm for example, and so Adobe (and a lot of other companies, like Symantec for eaxmple) really have to thank the pirates for their success I think. However, with the big push that is open source, I think many are realizing that not paying for corporate stuff by using pirated versions of software instead of paying outrageous fees, is not enough anymore. Sure, there is still a lot of stuff that is pirated these days if for no better reason than civil disobediance (same as with music), and sure maybe there are a few criminal rings making money from counterfeit software perhaps, but I think even pirated stuff, while available in abundance more so today than ever, can’t be thought of the same as it used to be anymore.

Anyways, I especially like the first comment regarding the calcualtor, which I also agree with another poster was spot on. Besides that, everyone knows that using a pirated copy of something does not equal a lost sale. Duh.

Clearly Voodoo economics. Money not spent on software is spent on something else, perhaps food. That money may even create more jobs than the jobs lost at the big software companies.

The 99 percent figure is obviously bogus and misleading too. 99 percent of the installed programs are installed in home computers and no one can know (on a world wide basis) what percent of the installed programs came with the computer, is freeware, was purchased or was copied like a rose plant from a cutting.

In the end freeware creates more wealth for the people and that is the end game of the people. Because of this, a new software copyright, compensation-for-programmers and distribution model should be created and enforced by the people, hopefully through the government they supposedly own.

BTW, if the situation is so bad, why are American software companies investing so heavily to do their software development work in foreign countries? the message is contradictory: We will export the few remaining jobs?

Or is it that Bill Gates (the wealthiest man in the world) is not rich enugh?

There is clearly a problem that needs fixing. First the people need to get the ownership of the government back. If this is not done, what is needed will not be done. But first the legislators need fixing themselves.

Here in Puerto Rico, we do not own our own government, as we are a non voting territory of the USA. We do not vote for the American legislature or the presidency. Our government is owned by either the US government and by special interest groups.

We do have a two tier (a Senate and a House of Representatives) local legislature which is totally inoperative and whatever they do is for the special interest groups (and to comply with new American laws) or is political infighting and positioning. Their only goal is getting re-elected.

Our legislators learned at Washington. Against the universal wish of all legislators and most politicians we the people forced our legislature to legislate a referendum to cut in half the legislature. We won with about 80 percent of the votes. As a result our next legislature will be 1/2 the size and one that has heard our message: Do your work or get out. I predict 75 to 90 percent of our legislators will be kicked out on our next election in 2008.

Americans voters should learn something from Puerto Rico this time.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Note to “journalists”. MS has included a calculator for your convenience. It is located under Programs -> Accessories.

Please use it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/09/letters/