War on piracy

Oh dear.. the american sickness has spread to the BSA.. theyre now declaring wars on nouns :(
 
I saw this cool t-shirt once. It was the picture of Skull and Bones but the skull looked like a tape. The saying read "Home taping is illegal and it's fun"
 
Amida said:
I saw this cool t-shirt once. It was the picture of Skull and Bones but the skull looked like a tape. The saying read "Home taping is illegal and it's fun"
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The Pirate Bay logo?
 
BSA being lazy and greedy.. "10% UP TO R100 000"... why not just 10% regardless? if someone busts a R10 000 000 piracy, they should get R1 000 000 dont you think? Shows that a BSA just wants the money, nothing more.
 
sorry all i hears is bla bla something piracy bla bla
 
This is more hype. I have followed a case where someone reported a company to the BSA and they had a strong case, and the BSA didnt properly follow it up or even attempt to do an inspection. Apparently they used to use Anton Pillars to come and raid premises. The company in question is apparently a South Korean company that provides speed cameras to various municipalities. These speed cameras apparently run pirated copies of windows along with practically all the pcs they have. It would have been a high profile case.

It seems the BSA is a sterile entity that is powerless and is all bark and no bite.
 
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Microsoft further says that the piracy of business applications in South Africa cost commercial software publishers almost R2,3 billion last year. Estimates suggest that reducing piracy by 10 percentage points over four years could generate an extra 1 200 jobs in the local IT sector, R6 billion in local industry revenue and R490 million in additional tax revenues.
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I highly doubt that a 10% reduction in the software piracy in South Africa will increase jobs... It will in reality cost jobs because the companies will have to divert money from salaries to buying overpriced software and all of that money will be flowing out of the country pushing up our current account deficit.
 
I think that busting the major crime rings who create the counterfeit copies is a good thing. I'm talking about the people who have stamping and production facilities. The same goes for IT shops who sell computers with pirated Windows copies on. In many ways, buying a new computer like that with a pirated OS is a case of you being cheated out of your rightful purchase. Mind you, I'm talking for your basic/first time computer owner.

Home piracy is another matter, with CD/DVD writers, flash media, portable hard drives and so on. That will never go away, and companies have more or less learned to live with that, despite the cost.
 
Bill gates does not seem to be suffering from piracy......
 
Wyzak said:
I highly doubt that a 10% reduction in the software piracy in South Africa will increase jobs... It will in reality cost jobs because the companies will have to divert money from salaries to buying overpriced software and all of that money will be flowing out of the country pushing up our current account deficit.
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Indeed. The only way it would have increased local revenue, would be if the software was developed locally. I'm sure government would get sales tax, but it wouldn't increase local jobs.
 
what stops me then from installing a cr@pload of "liberated" software all over my work's network, and then reporting them?

hmmmm, /me smells a conflict of interest!
 
Tectonic's take on the whole issue: http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3405
And then there is the usual assumption that just because people have the software illegally that they would actually have enough money to ever pay for it. It’s the same as a teenager with R10 000 worth of MP3s on his or her iPod. Most of it is pirated but the fact is that asked for the money they wouldn’t be able to hand it over. So in reality any money that the music industry could feasibly make out of the “pirate” is likely to be a whole lot less than the assumed R10 000. The same is true of software.
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I don't quite buy the over-simplified claim that piracy is harming the economy. Many propriatary software packages are so expensive as to make them unaffordable for small businesses. In some cases piracy can be very empowering and can actually stimulate economic activity and development.

I think the BSA is understandably pushing a very one-sided view of the matter.
 
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