p2pnet - rss feed: New CAAST ‘pirate’ report
p2p news / p2pnet: The world software cartel’s CAAST (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft) is at it again.
CAAST is the Canadian version of the Business Software Alliance, the power PR outfit owned by such as Microsoft, Apple and Macromedia and whose “facts” are more likely to be fiction than accurate representations of what’s actually happening.
It recently paid for studies which suggested most Canadian computer science students preparing for careers in programming and software development “pirate” software.
Now, “Software piracy is costing Canada’s information technology sector billions of dollars and thousands of jobs, according to a study by the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft,” says a Canadian Press story.
“The study released Thursday suggested reducing the current software piracy rate of 36 per cent by 10 percentage points could create 14,000 new jobs in the sector and add $8.1 billion in economic growth and $2.3 million in tax revenues over four years.”
The ’study’ was put together by the International Data Corp, the same firm whose reports have been called seriously into question by Britain’s prestigious The Economist.
CAAST, “suggests that countries wanting to combat piracy should update copyright laws, create strong enforcement mechanisms - including tough anti-piracy laws - dedicate government resources to deal with it, improve public awareness and require public sectors to use only legitimate software,” says CP.
Sectors concerned about counterfeiting are purely commercial and have nothing to do with governments.
It also says, “The study released Thursday suggested reducing the current software piracy rate of 36 per cent by 10 percentage points could create 14,000 new jobs in the sector and add $8.1 billion in economic growth and $2.3 million in tax revenues over four years.”
This IDC ‘report’ was spun off the main event which covered, “70 countries representing 99 percent of the world’s information technology spending”. It said, “a worldwide reduction of software piracy by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate 2.4 million jobs and $400 billion of economic growth”.
The UK version said a 10% reduction in Britain’s software piracy rate would result in 34,000 new jobs, £11bn of economic growth and a £2.8bn increase in tax revenues
Of it, The Register reader Alan Drew said:
“My Maths may suck, but if a mere 10% can create £11bn and 34,000 new jobs then, getting all over it and solving the piracy problem once and for all, creates £110bn growth, £28bn in tax and 340,000 jobs
Not bad for an industry currently worth “£25.9bn in tax revenues. It is valued at £39.8bn”
“It would appear that according to the BSA we’re currently ripping off nearly three times as much as the industry is worth.
“Please stop publishing this bulshit. Or at least if you are going to publish it, publish it with the respectful amount of investigation and analysis instead of just regurgitating the lobbyist junk.
“Out of curiosity, why is it that the tax take now (according the the crap you published) is greater than 50% and yet if we eliminate piracy altogether the tax take is nearer 25%. Would it have anything to do with global monopolists avoiding tax by any chance?”
(Thanks, Marc)
Also read:-
“pirate” software - Thieving Canadian students, August 9, 2005
Canadian Press - Software piracy costs Canada billions: study, December 8, 2005
The Economist - The Economist angers BSA, June 15, 2005
main event - ‘Software piracy is rampant!’, December 9, 2005
December 12th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
I agree that the concept of “Software Piracy”, a concept that was created and perpetuated by the “Software manufacturing” industry that is fighting to protect their antiquated business model, is costing the entire economy a lot of money. It is time that the “pay per” business models, such as pay-per copy, pay per user, pay per view, and others are adequately examined for their full costs. It is time for everyone to realize that the BSA and CAAST do not represent software authors, but a group of dieing dinasaurs dependant on an old way of thinking.
It costs a lot of time, money, and other resources to be trying to keep track of copies of something that is a pure intangible like software. This is especially true in a world where, for the majority of the population, paying these outrageously high “pay per” fees would otherwise feed hungry people.
“Every license for Office plus Windows in Brazil - a country in which 22 million people are starving - means we have to export 60 sacks of soybeans,” says Marcelo D’Elia Branco, coordinator of the country’s Free Software Project.
This is the time of the year to be thinking of other people, and while we also have poor people in Canada that are unable to pay these unnecessary “pay per” fees, the problem becomes even more obvious when we look outside of the rich countries.
The solution to the problem of the “software manufacturing” tax is the switch to software that is produced, distributed and funded using more modern business models such as FLOSS which do not charge “pay per” fees.
The fact is that their flawed methodology can’t tell the difference between not “paying per” for their member software and those of us who have switched entirely away from “pay per” business models. They are quite deliberately including their major competitors as “theft”, something that is clearly misrepresentation of the facts and something that they should be under legal investigation for.
CAAST misinformation
http://p2pnet.net/story/5297
Supporting Microsoft office is a support for hunger?
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/865
December 12th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
Hello BSA !!! - Everyone has already purchased the software.
I myself own full install versions of Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 & Windows XP. If the hard drive in my system fails or my operating system became terribly infected (such as with the Sony/BMG rootkit), I re-install the operating system. I don’t need to purchase any new software, I’m happy with what I have.
Maybe this is the reason sales are dropping ? People are holding on to what they have. Besides, who would want “Windows Vista” the infamous “lock-down” software.
December 12th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
“The UK version said a 10% reduction in Britain’s software piracy rate would result in 34,000 new jobs, £11bn of economic growth and a £2.8bn increase in tax revenues
Of it, The Register reader Alan Drew said:
“My Maths may suck, but if a mere 10% can create £11bn and 34,000 new jobs then, getting all over it and solving the piracy problem once and for all, creates £110bn growth, £28bn in tax and 340,000 jobs ”
Alan seems to have taken the % from the wrong place, it is not 10% of the pirated software that would cause this increase but dropping the piracy from 36% of all saftarw costs to 26% of all software costs…. but the numbers still don’t make sense at that puts the industry value at £110bn
“Not bad for an industry currently worth “£25.9bn in tax revenues. It is valued at £39.8bn” ”
hmm maybe they are just letting us know that when piracy is decreased they will increase their prices so they will gouge more!
December 12th, 2005 at 7:43 pm
What absolutely infuriates me, apart from the obvious bias shown in these kinds of supposedly independent reports, is the fact that the mainstream newspapers and radio and television stations report them almost verbatim without any pretense of having verified the data they contain.
Morg
December 12th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
What erks me in all this is what’s unspoken. Pracitices of the software manufacturing industry is what is driving the piracy. Many like me don’t want the latest greatest. Why buy locked down software OS’s that are considered the latest greatest when the newest version doesn’t give the purchaser anything they see as advantages over the older software? I just don’t see any justification in paying for a new OS that doesn’t seem a plain advantage over the last one.
I’ve used winblows since the days of the 3.1 version. I didn’t by Win Me, nor Win 2000. Sort of jumped over them and didn’t use them at all. Neither seemed to be worth upgrading too. That’s better than $200 bucks I saved by not buying the latest greatest. I’m sure in figuring reports, somewhere along the line it was written up as being due to piracy that I didn’t see the value of changing OS’s just because I didn’t buy the newest.
I don’t see the reflection of “specials” that are put out by the industry either. I got the chance to try Windows Media without paying a dime; legal too. If you are considered to be a business that the Microsucks Corp wants as a customer, you can become a sort of representive for them. They have a special class for that. You get new limited OSs, complete with keys that work 2 or 3 times for install. You can’t make backups, or anything like that, but use the OS you can. I didn’t pay diddly for it either. Nor did the one that gave it too me. It’s a freebee as part of the package from Microsucks.
We have become so enured to busts by the legal forces that $100 or $1000 dollar reports of illegal goods doesn’t make a dent in anything, doesn’t raise the eyebrows, doesn’t rate making a comment. Also being in the legal forces, you get better sentences if you can say we gottem, worth $40 billion in illegal goods. Sounds like the legal forces such as the cops were making good use of the taxpayers money. Never mind that it isn’t mentioned that it was an on going investigation of decades, spent far more than they took in; in real figures.
This is sort of like the RIAA and MPAA busts where a 40 speed cd burner is equal to 40, 1 speed burners. Nope it ain’t. No matter how fast the burner, it can only burn one disc at a time. Even the act of putting another blank in the unit removes from the capability of that vaporous figure of 40 times as many theme.
Still why would I pay full price for a software, that I don’t believe to be worth buying or using in the first place? Common practice of software manufacturers today means that a rewrite every few years ensures incompatibility as a built in feature. Games of yesteryear don’t run today unless you use the same software it was designed for. So software you purchased at full price then is worth next to nothing today. To me that’s not value and it in turn limits just what I will consider buying. Every time I see something new on the shelves, that little thought remains in the back of my mind and reminds me it isn’t worth what is being asked of it. I can spend the same price on something tangible, like a set of pots and pans, and it will be usable from now till whenever but it won’t stop being of use, unlike software.
December 13th, 2005 at 1:35 am
Russell, your viewpoint is pure enlightenment.
There is one reason (there are others) that politicians of the poor Latin American contries commit treason to their own country by agreeing with the superpowers to one sided IP (the money flows in one direction obly) treaties, that comes with the attached string of very high prices for IP goods (medicines, programs, movies, etc.) and the requirement that local producers be labeled pirates and exterminated.
A question we may ask is why would a backward country that hardly has any medical or technology research or patents worth mentioning agree to respect the patents of another, technologically advanced country? Simple, the other country, the superpowers, lends money to the politician’s country and the politicians then manage the money, while diverting a good share to themselves. Of course, some of the money, or all of it for some loans, must be spent on superpower country products, armaments being a favorite.
These politicians use the superpowers as backups. They invest their money (obtained through corruption and gifts) in shares or banks controlled by and/or located in the superpower countries. What these politicians have is a vested interest in the superpowers. They have little interest in investing in their own countries out of fear that their sources of their fortunes are suspect or in the event of a coup or revolution, their money is in a safer place. Typically they own real estate property in the superpower contries.
These politicians are mostly right wing conservatives and are unlike the people of their country. In Latin America, they look like Europeans, while the majority of the people of the country are racially Orientals (or Indians as they are incorrectly called).
The Europeans who took roots in Latin America took everything away from the natives and they are still working on that, this time around by collaborating with Hollywood, RIAA and every other organization that has tried to set up a world monopoly.
The good news is that the picture is changing fast. Right wing politicians are being replaced fast in Latin America. Hopefully this will help to fix the world’s IP problems, in all countries, including superpower countries, where IP abuse is as bad as in any place, as evidenced by the RIAA abuse of the American people.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 13th, 2005 at 4:06 am
I’m still amazed that Jobs isn’t suing these guys for lumping mac owners in with ppl who pirate windows. Yep, because the mac’s are sold “without a copy of windows” these agencies assume the mac users will pirate a copy of it. Windows. For a mac… yeah. Sure. Oh and linux users too. For the same reason.
These ppl have no credibility, and neither do the lamescream media outlets that regurgitate every press release as though it was gospel.
December 13th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I understand what you were saying, and agree with much of it, but I don’t agree with your usage of the term “backward country”. We also seem to disagree where the “corrupt leaders” are. I happen to think that it is Northern Countries (the minority-world countries that have the majority of the financial wealth), the countries that should know better, that are the most “backward” and “corrupt”.
I was in India in 1998 when there was a patent bill going through parliament. The two sides of the debate were as follows:
a) If we pass this bill our farmers will be decimated, something that turned out to be true where farmers lost farms that were in the family for generations. The occupation of India by companies like Monsanto and Microsoft (to name just two) has been suggested to be worse overall than even the British occupation.
b) If we don’t pass this bill the western economies will use their influence at the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank, IMF, etc) to “call in our loans” and put the entire Indian economy in danger.
Nobody in India thought that this bill would be good for India, it was just a matter of trying to minimize the harm that Western countries were going to do to India.
In the end the Indian parliament sacrificed the farmers for the rest of the economy based on the pressure that *OUR LEADERS* (Canada, USA, Europe, etc) put on them. While there is corruption in all governments, I believe the issue here was corrupt Western leaders in bed with patent occupiers, not corrupt Indian leaders.
Suggesting that it is corrupt foreign governments that are the problem is always an easy excuse for us as it means we can’t do much about it. The reality is that we have a lot we can do by fixing up our own governments, and that includes Canada!
December 13th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Look at how they count: they count new computer purchases, and estimate the demand for their software (Everyone runs Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, right?). They then count the number of boxes of software that they shipped, subtract the two, and declare the difference as piracy.
Every single copy of Linux or TheOpenCD.org I have handed out has been counted by their bogus methods as infringement.
It is not older computers that they are counting, but each new computer.
Want to help get people from under these clowns and increase the percentages not paying the BSA tax?
Please go to http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/ and http://www.theopencd.org/ , burn copies, put a nice label on it, and hand it out to all the people you will see this season.
Ubuntu also sends out CDs, but it wouldn’t be possible to get them in time for the festive season for (legal) sharing!
December 13th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
If everyone who reads these reports sends letters to the editor, some will get published and eventually they will stop just reporting the factually deficient press releases without also reporting the facts from the opposition.
December 13th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
Apple isn’t going to sue itself as it is a big part of this whole mess.
http://www.caast.com/about/default.asp?load=members
http://www.bsa.org/usa/about/BSA-Members.cfm
In the Operating System market Apple differs from Microsoft in their success, not their questionable practises.
In the DRM music distribution business Apple is the most successful and thus should be recognized as the greatest threat.
December 13th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
I also understand that according to CAAST, software piracy is going to ruin this years maple syrup sap harvest, chase all of the lobsters out of the bay of Fundy and is responsible for Newfoundland being in their weird 1/2 hour different time zone than the rest of Atlantic Canada. What’s the Canadian Navy doing about this? Can’t they find the pirate ship. It should be very obvious to spot out there in the sea. Just follow the trail of discarded CDs and DVDs floating in the water.
–TG
December 13th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
“Can’t they find the pirate ship. It should be very obvious to spot out there in the sea. Just follow the trail of discarded CDs and DVDs floating in the water.”
They did except the trail also had money floating behind it and the ship was owned by CAAST/CRIAA…. Seems they were doing everything in their power to make ‘piracy’ look as bad as possible so they can lobby to have the laws changed …. there was also a small rowboat full of politicians tied to the side, they were climbing all over each other to get their hands on the money.
December 14th, 2005 at 1:56 am
You are right and we do not disagree.
The greater corruption is at the superpowers and the influence of larger corporations.
I was just trying to explain why the Latin American occupiers of the political powers accept what is clearly a bad deal for their countries.
If I were a Latin American (and I am, being from Puerto Rico) I would be concerned more of what the political leaders of my country do than what the large foreign banks want to do in my country.
Here in Puerto Rico we have one of the highest per-capita debt to foreing banks of any contry. Politician love to borrow so they can throw money around in construction projects (construction projects are great for getting kickbacks) and to employ government workers, which now make up over 1/3 of the work force, a huge work force considering that were are not a socialist country. The government jobs are to a great extent given in exchange for political support. Most government workers do absolutely nothing and globally produce less services of lower quality than the governments of countries with a 10 percent government workforce. Certainly we are a backward country.
Sure, foreign banks and corporations come here and do great damage. Walgreens has decimated the local drugs stores. So has Wal-Mart and Home Depot done a similar thing. But they are not the problem we can solve. The problem is our local politicians who approve everything that is American and are on the take of large foreign companies and have their summer homes in Florida or Colorado.
Then there are the American federal courts here, populated by puertoricans judges. These could not be more anti Puerto Rico because it is impossible.
Up to now all we have done is watch our politician and judges sell their soul for money. Chages are up to us. We can just sit back and watch, or take action.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 14th, 2005 at 1:58 am
You are right and we do not disagree.
The greater corruption is at the superpowers and the influence of larger corporations.
I was just trying to explain why the Latin American occupiers of the political powers accept what is clearly a bad deal for their countries.
If I were a Latin American (and I am, being from Puerto Rico) I would be concerned more of what the political leaders of my country do than what the large foreign banks want to do in my country.
Here in Puerto Rico we have one of the highest per-capita debt to foreing banks of any contry. Politician love to borrow so they can throw money around in construction projects (construction projects are great for getting kickbacks) and to employ government workers, which now make up over 1/3 of the work force, a huge work force considering that were are not a socialist country. The government jobs are to a great extent given in exchange for political support. Most government workers do absolutely nothing and globally produce less services of lower quality than the governments of countries with a 10 percent government workforce. Certainly we are a backward country.
Sure, foreign banks and corporations come here and do great damage. Walgreens has decimated the local drugs stores. So has Wal-Mart and Home Depot done a similar thing. But they are not the problem we can solve. The problem is our local politicians who approve everything that is American and are on the take of large foreign companies and have their summer homes in Florida or Colorado.
Then there are the American federal courts here, populated by puertoricans judges. These could not be more anti Puerto Rico because it is impossible.
Up to now all we have done is watch our politician and judges sell their soul for money. Chages are up to us. We can just sit back and watch, or take action.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com