Yet I've heard allegations from some IT buyers of Microsoft salespeople using the threat of a BSA audit to get customers to upgrade.
We take very seriously what we're doing here. It's a good thing to keep in mind that our companies are not in the business of anti-piracy. They're in the business of developing software packages and marketing them to the public. They're not interested in going after companies. If they could, they'd fire me tomorrow and hire another programmer. The notion we're doing enforcement for anything other than to promote compliance is just false.
You've come under some criticism for the allegedly inflated figures in your latest piracy survey. What's your response?
Once again, people are trying to create something that's not there. We've been doing this study for at least 10 years, and the only thing that's different about the study this year is that it's more comprehensive. In the past, we've omitted certain categories, such as consumer software like reference and entertainment. Operating systems have never been included in the past. And we haven't looked as closely as we did this year at global software -- products created and bought to market outside the United States.
This year's study is really just a continuation and extension of what we've done in the past, with a bigger base. The conclusions are pretty consistent. The piracy rate we announced this year doesn't vary significantly from the piracy rate we've announced in the past. Naturally, because you're looking at a bigger market, you come up with a higher figure for lost revenue.
But some people have a problem with the apparent assumption that every pirated copy of a program is a lost sale.
I think the methodology behind the study is very sound. I haven't seen where anyone's pointed out anything about the methodology they disagree with. Many people don't like the number for one reason or another.
The notion that not every pirated copy represents a lost sale seems to be a correct one; I don't think anyone in our industry has ever argued it does. But I'd say when you look at piracy generally, it's far more likely that a pirated copy of business productivity package represents a lost sale than it would with other types of digital works. It stands to reason that a company that makes more copies of a program on company PCs than they have licenses to support them would purchase most if not all of those programs if they weren't copying them illegally.
There's a fairly close to one-to-one correspondence between workplace copying and lost sales, as opposed to say downloading music files from the Internet. You have to understand that the majority of the problem for this industry is concentrated in the workplace. And most companies that are copying business software are using it to run their businesses. To say that's not lost revenue -- I don't know.
Talkback
"From the perspective of the software company having its product used without recompense, there's not a lot of difference. It's like if somebody steals my car, I don't really care if they drive it and enjoy it or if they abandon it by the side of the road -- either way, I'm out a car."
No! This is wrong! The whole reason intellectual property is legally distinct from property as a whole is that you can copy it without removing the original owner's enjoyment of it.
How someone of this level of importance in the practical side of intellectual property can make such a basic mistake is beyond me. Is he's doing it for effect without being concerned about the niceties of fact?
Jez
<i>"So is your advice to just make tracking licences part of somebody's job?
Absolutely. Most of the companies we end up contacting are not bad companies. They do most things right; they're honest companies. They just need to treat this issue more seriously."</i>
Yeah.
Audit all desktop computer and laptops. Make a list of the contects of each HD, CD and floppy disks. Compare the installed softwares with your licenses. Repeat this procedure every three months.
OR... use Free/Open Source Software: it's less expensive; it's more secure; it's better; there is no piracy.
<i>"It's like if somebody steals my car, I don't really care if they drive it and enjoy it or if they abandon it by the side of the road -- either way, I'm out a car."</i>
Uh... no.
If I a copy of a software, the original is not lost.
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." (George Bernard Shaw)
At the back of both the BSA and FAST is the burning desire to get statutory right of inspection / auditing. In some ways this might even be a good thing: After all you can at least negotiate with the Inland Revenue! Every time I get a call from either of these outfits I feel like I am personally on trial and anything I say can and will be taken down etc etc. and end up banged up for 10 years because I have an unlicensed font somewhere. Yet they are not the police, nor anything like. Their tactics are easily into the realm of harassment. For those of us with OSL agreements they are also unable to explain why we effectively have to pay for Windows twice every time we buy a PC.