The Haus

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

Piracy Figures -- 6:37 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

This story on CNN's site claims that 37% of the software in use around the world is pirated. My big question is this: exactly how do they determine that figure? The stats come from the Business Software Alliance which is not a government agency but an organization controlled by the major software companies to fight piracy. So naturally statistics like these make their pleas seem viable. I believe the stats are impossible to verify. The article basically uses this as a justification for WinXP and Office XP's copy protection schemes. But like all copy protection schemes, this one will be easily circumvented. The only people who will be affected are legitimate users who have to put up with extra garbage just to use software they paid for.

I believe that warezers and other pirates should be kicked directly in the forehead. It is theft, pure and simple. However, it is a major jump to consider anyone with a CD burner to be a thief. Some of us find them rather handy for Linux distributions :)

The Master comments: There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

J.t.Qbe comments: But A.T., Microsoft does consider Linux to be theft: theft of profits! You're right, though--you can't trust the BSA's piracy statistics. This is something which is impossible to measure, but can easily be used to justify it's strongarm tactics and any wacko kind of copy protection M$ wants to put into place. (Just got a CD burner today; will be burning the new FreeBSD tomorrow at work).

News for 05/22/2001

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