Software Piracy hurts economy: BSA

This is bull,If South African import taxes and mark ups werent so ridiculous then we would surely buy the media legally, they push up prices with inflation, the inflation comes down, but the prices stay up.
Screw them fo sho.
 
JoSorc said:
What is a reasonable price? The latest BR's cost around R200 off Amazon.
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Sigh...

On play.com, Lord of the Rings (Blu-Ray) is 8 Pounds including delivery. That works out, for someone in the UK, to R87, which is a very reasonable price.

On lookandlisten.co.za, the same things costs R300. That's over three times the price.

Can you justify this?
 
First off.. the bsa thumbsucked these figures. Simple rule to follow when dealing with an organization like the BSA... theyre are full time liars who make up stats to suite their arguments.

That said, software piracy helps the South African economy by reducing our nation trade deficit.
 
What they should say is that a 10% reduction in piracy would result in 10% increase in time spent sitting around saying "I'm bored but like hell I'm gonna spend R2000 for the Stargate Sg-1 box set."
 
Because selling, servicing and supporting software creates demand for related distribution and services, the impact of software piracy reaches beyond software publishers, starving local distributors and service providers of spending that creates jobs and generates more tax revenues, boosting the local economy.
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Maybe the Bull Shyte Alliance can explain:
  1. Except for transport, what other demand is created?
  2. How many local distributors have "starved"?
  3. How many more employees a company requires to sell 10 copies of a program than selling 9?
  4. How much of the additional tax revenue would be wasted by government?
  5. How much economic activity is created by people using "pirated" software?
  6. Give a breakdown of where these 1650 high-tech jobs will be "created" since so little of the software being pirated is created locally?
 
hammell said:
Sigh...

On play.com, Lord of the Rings (Blu-Ray) is 8 Pounds including delivery. That works out, for someone in the UK, to R87, which is a very reasonable price.

On lookandlisten.co.za, the same things costs R300. That's over three times the price.

Can you justify this?
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I agree that CDs and DVDs (and BRs) are sold at exorbitant mark-ups in SA. Not that I want to side with the enemy, but I have thought of one possible reason why the prices of these items are so high in SA. The way I see it is that only taxpayers can afford to buy BR discs (probably not 100% true, but should account for the bulk of BR sales). That is a pool of only about 5 million persons in SA.
Compare that to the UK, where (according to Wikipedia) they have more than 30 million taxpayers.
Maybe the price of IP items is related to the size of the market?
 
Antonf said:
Maybe the Bull Shyte Alliance can explain:
  1. Give a breakdown of where these 1650 high-tech jobs will be "created" since so little of the software being pirated is created locally?
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I am pretty sure that the BSA considers a sales assistant at your local Incredible Connection to be a "high-tech job" ....
 
Whatever is not spend on pirated items is spend elsewhere in the economy. The cost of piracy to the economy is thus zero.
 
PythonFSi said:
That will also become a thing of the past pretty soon. Most media will be sitting on a storage server somewhere to be downloaded. Distribution costs are cut to a bare minimum.

High speed, large capacity internet will see to this.
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Already downloading our LICENSED copies of Backupexec,Microsoft Windows 7/2008,Office 2010 etc directly from the software websites,who actually buys boxed sets now?
 
Article on the reliability of the BSA statistics, specifically targeted at South Africa.

Also, apparently piracy is DOWN year-over-year, not rising.
 
To everyone that says this is bull I'm sorry for you but it isn't.

My father has his own IT company which does a lot of business in with the state. SITA has not paid their bill for over 600 days now, and is also refusing to pay their yearly maintenance fee. If this continues till the 24th of the month my father will be forced to close down his company since he cannot afford to pay his employees.

There you go guys piracy has just cost SA some great local IP, and left 150 people without work. (possibly more because of the ripple effect.)

Congratu****inglations.
 
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SpoOkie said:
To everyone that says this is bull I'm sorry for you but it isn't.

My father has his own IT company which does a lot of business in with the state. SITA has not paid their bill for over 600 days now, and is also refusing to pay their yearly maintenance fee. If this continues till the 24th of the month my father will be forced to close down his company since he cannot afford to pay his employees.

There you go guys piracy has just cost SA some great local IP, and left 150 people without work. (possibly more because of the ripple effect.)

Congratu****inglations.
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You'll need to explain why piracy is responsible for this as I am not getting the connection.
 
SpoOkie said:
To everyone that says this is bull I'm sorry for you but it isn't.

My father has his own IT company which does a lot of business in with the state. SITA has not paid their bill for over 600 days now, and is also refusing to pay their yearly maintenance fee. If this continues till the 24th of the month my father will be forced to close down his company since he cannot afford to pay his employees.

There you go guys piracy has just cost SA some great local IP, and left 150 people without work. (possibly more because of the ripple effect.)

Congratu****inglations.
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This, however, is not piracy, it's breach of contract. They have ordered a product from you, which you supplied legally, then withheld payment for it. What should be done in a case like that, since you have proof that they have not paid for a service you rendered, is to take them to court. Get a court order that the relevant department should cease and desist from using said software. Sue them for the legal cost as well. But seriously - almost 2 years? What steps have been taken already? There are some oversight departments in government you can approach with this sort of complaint.

But this is government incompetence. Stricter anti-piracy laws will NOT solve this kind of problem, unfortunately. As a side-note, there's a reason I prefer to not work with government departments. Got burned the same way, though for a small enough amount that it's not worth the effort of recovering.
 
Piracy is the best form of marketing for these companies.. without it, they would never have become the "standard" in the industry. :sick:
 
VJB 449 said:
Whatever is not spend on pirated items is spend elsewhere in the economy. The cost of piracy to the economy is thus zero.
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Also legit goods (DVD's, CD's, games etc) are all imported and are sold with very little margin in SA, more money goes in than out of the country.

You get a CD for R160: R30 goes to Musica, R10 goes to tax, R120 goes to America. (An even worse thing happens when you break down the cost of buying Windows 7)

This is the worst argument that BSA has ever come up with.
 
SpoOkie said:
To everyone that says this is bull I'm sorry for you but it isn't.

My father has his own IT company which does a lot of business in with the state. SITA has not paid their bill for over 600 days now, and is also refusing to pay their yearly maintenance fee. If this continues till the 24th of the month my father will be forced to close down his company since he cannot afford to pay his employees.

There you go guys piracy has just cost SA some great local IP, and left 150 people without work. (possibly more because of the ripple effect.)

Congratu****inglations.
Click to expand...

So what did the BSA do to help you ?

Are SITA still using the software ?
 
SpoOkie said:
To everyone that says this is bull I'm sorry for you but it isn't.

My father has his own IT company which does a lot of business in with the state. SITA has not paid their bill for over 600 days now, and is also refusing to pay their yearly maintenance fee. If this continues till the 24th of the month my father will be forced to close down his company since he cannot afford to pay his employees.

There you go guys piracy has just cost SA some great local IP, and left 150 people without work. (possibly more because of the ripple effect.)

Congratu****inglations.
Click to expand...

Err . . . wrong thread!
 
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