More on CAAST bullshit study
p2p news / p2pnet: Canadian national TV station CTV recently featured a Canadian Press reporting-by-press-release story on the latest bullshit study conducted by the International Data Corp (IDC) on behalf the software industry.
Spammed by CAAST (Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft), it purported to show software piracy, "is costing Canada’s information technology sector billions of dollars and thousands of jobs" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Letter to CTV
I sent the following smaller letter to CTV who printed the Canadian Press story.
Please do more research before republishing these flawed press releases. This study does not adequately differentiate between software copyright infringement and the growing number of people who are switching to legal competition where it is legal and encouraged to share.
Suggesting that increasing the amount of money people pay CAAST would improve the Canadian economy is like blindly suggesting that increasing taxes would improve the economy. Increasing taxes would also mean more government employees would be hired to manage (or mismanage
this money, and would clearly benefit the bottom line of the government.
I am a commercial support person for Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). This is software that is paid for up-front during development, and does not involve a charge per copy. Every computer I have purchased for myself or my customers has been "estimated" to have some demand for CAAST software, and yet no CAAST software is ever used. This means that by their flawed methodology of counting computers shipped, estimating the demand for their software, and subtracting actual shipments has always counted me as a "software pirate".
The real solution to the software copyright infringement problem is the migration to methods of production, distribution and funding of software that does not charge per copy. This means that the real Canadians Against Software Theft are people like myself that are producing, distributing and funding FLOSS.
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).]
Also read:-
bullshit study – New CAAST ‘pirate’ report, December 12, 2005
December 14th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
Now that hits them where they live. There’s no place in their market that such a business model can exist. Doesn’t hide the fact that one exists, only that it doesn’t fit them.
It also smacks of making up figures from vaporous methods to attempt to justify their position. Just like the RIAA and MPAA its methods of determining a pirate station by how many burners are there by using the speed to determine numbers. a 40 speed burner doesn’t equal 40-1 speed burners. Eye grabbing numbers is all this is about and nothing more. Has nothing to do with the reality of what is phyiscally there.
Their assumption is everyone uses Winblows, therefore all computers must run Winblows. Well heres one that likes Linux and FLOSS. There’s not even the application wine on it. Without Wine or a simular program, no program written for winblows will work. What that says, is that I am not running Winblows nor Winblows programs on it. Where does THAT fit in those numbers?
Yet another smoke and mirrors claim is all the above amounts to. It is designed to be released just before some upcoming legistation to be referred to when it comes time as an “established survey” but in reality has no meaning and is certainly a stranger to truth.