BSA equates software pirates to Somali pirates
Some pieces essentially write themselves. This is one of them.
I received the following e-mail this morning with the subject "BSA Launches Faces of Piracy Campaign." It came from the Fd.com domain, which I assume is the Business Software Alliance's public relations firm for this campaign.
We've all been following the events of the past week of the pirates off the Horn of Africa. Piracy takes many forms, some more violent than others. I wanted to let you know that the Business Software Alliance is launching a new campaign today "Faces of Internet Piracy" that shows the real-life impact of software piracy--from hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines to jail time. Click on the picture below to learn more about the campaign...let me know if you're interested in writing about this.
Whatever you may think of the BSA and its tactics in general, this has got to be one of the most tone-deaf and cynically opportunistic PR pitches I've seen for quite some time.
It's one thing to figuratively equate piracy with making digital copies of software, music, movies, or books. We can debate endlessly whether such actions are truly stealing or not. But that's not the point.
It's that to literally and deliberately equate the two in the wake of pirates taking a ship's crew hostage and the US Navy subsequently killing three of the attackers...Well, words fail me.
Gordon Haff is a principal IT adviser at Illuminata and has more than 20 years of IT industry experience. He writes about what's happening with enterprise servers and data centers, "Yotta-scale" computing, and related software and device trends as part of the CNET Blog Network. Disclosure. 
This was completely inappropriate on their part and an affront to the captain, crew and their families of the Mersk Alabama.
Hey, some good news ... I heard in the news this morning that we got Captain Phillips back!
Making digital copies of software does not put sailors in danger of death, does not steal ships from companies holding them ransom for millions, but in fact DOES increase the net value of that software on the market. Ex: people who used pirate copies of Office for years lent their weight to the momentum that made MS Office the de facto standard for office document formats. The copiers actually made ME more likely to pay MSFT's ridiculous prices!
Digital copies are not theft. They are infringement. Piracy is worse than theft because it involves kidnap or murder and depriving original owners of their property; copies are less of a violation than theft because nothing is actually taken.
the bsa is a joke. their members would be better served saving their cash and not hiring some whack job company to try to protect their profits. the bsa is more like the somali pirates than anyone else.
they want to enrich themselves by doing nothing except nitpicking the record keeping of innoncent people.
the bsa backs the notion that a company, like adobe, can take a fairly priced product like dreamweaver or photoshop, make few substantial changes to it, and then charge 2-3 times more for it and give the end-user no other option except to either pirate it or do without.
i wonder how many more sales adobe would have on that product if they were to simply change 50% less for the software they purchased from macromedia versus how few they have now?
What do you mean "we can debate"? What is there to debate? Making copies of copyrighted material is obviously stealing. Creators of these product spend their time, money and effort to get them to market. Copying a book or software without its creators consent is no different than stealing a car. The value is the intellectual property here. Just because you CAN make digital copies of a product does not mean it is OK to DO so.
Articles like these make stealing seem like "OK" in the eyes of the general public. IT IS NOT! Piracy is piracy. Music/Book/Software/Movies is piracy. If you steal, you are a thief.
Making copies of copyrighted material is obviously stealing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then what does "copyright infringement" mean?
Well. You're wrong. Stealing a car involves a violation of someone's private property. There is a sense of invasion, of a lack of being able to protect one's self, one's stuff, and one's kin. Victims are then deprived of the car themselves forever. They will need to pay $$ out-or-pocket to replace the car. Pretty serious stuff.
A single person copying a song or book for their use does not deprive the owner of their property. It iis only an act of copying something that the artist deliberately published to the world themselves - but they put it out there with conditions. Only those conditions were violated. Nothing is taken. The artist can still pursue any sales they can achieve. The artist is not out of pocket to replace the asset. The private space of the artist was not violated.
A "pirate" that copies the artwork for the purpose of resale IS taking away the ability of the artist to sell their work, so this is a crime for which there are remedies on the books. Even this is not like stealing a car, since the artist has not lost existing property, but loses some potential to earn future revenues. Yes, this is bad, but it's not Grand Theft Auto bad. And I think the thread is discussing the personal copy type of copying, since the BSA pursues individuals who use unlicensed software with site audits.
So, yeah, I suppose weI COULD debate this. But just barely. Your "stealing a car" analogy is so blatently false that it scarecely provides fodder for debate. If we did debate, you would lose, but not realize it. Which has most likely happened here.
Is unauthorized copying illegal? Sure, no "debate" there.
Is unauthorized copying wrong (or *should* it be illegal)? That's what we can legitimately debate, and many but not all people would answer "yes".
Is unauthorized copying stealing? Not at all - two entirely different concepts. If you intentionally blur these distinctions by calling copying "stealing" or "piracy", you are diverting the argument from the actual matter at hand.
I do that all the time - it is called free/open source software development. We *want* everyone to use our work.
I think the real crime is artificial scarcity. We now have the ability for everyone on the planet to have free access to all of the world's important literature, music, and knowledge (and software is a subset of knowledge). Remember that the purpose of copyright is not to ensure profits for authors - it is to encourage creation of new works on the condition that they eventually reach the public domain.
David
Where as "theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent."
Now I submit the question; which of the above terms best describes the act of copying a digital product?
When the term "piracy" is used in the context of digital products, obviously it is not about "violence committed at sea". This is an analogy. The point is you are taking somebody else's property without their consent. This is theft. As simple as that.
I dare you to spend months/years of your life writing a book, composing a song or developing software, only to see it being stolen by others, and you getting no return on your hard work. Then come back here and tell us again that "copying a digital product is not theft".
"Then come back here and tell us again that 'copying a digital product is not theft'."
Excuse me, did you actually read what he wrote? Because I can't see anywhere he said that. I saw him ask which term was more appropriate.
Straw-man argument. Put words into his mouth and then yell at him.
You know, this article isn't about what you're getting upset about. If you want to push your agenda, why not do it after an article where it's actually on-topic?
Might as well ask a newborn to do calculus for you ...
its bad, but its not piracy
"Then come back here and tell us again that 'copying a digital product is not theft'."
He did not say copying digital product was not theft; he said it was not piracy. If you doubt that, try joining up with a bunch of pirates and see if your skills at downloading the latest version of World of Warcraft qualifies you to square off against a Navy SEAL armed with an AK-47.
To be just a little more precise about exactly what I was trying to say. I'm not, in fact, especially bothered by the use of "piracy" in the general, metaphorical sense to mean copying MP3's or software. Clearly even some of the practitioners and facilitators of such activities don't mind it. However, to very directly and unambiguously draw an explicit connection to real, modern day pirates is just ick. (And to the degree that real pirates are more in the news, RIAA/MPAA/BSA/etc. may be advised to lay off the pirates terminology in the general case as well.)
Why, that's exactly what I got after purchasing Windows Vista. You people give new meaning to the term extremists.
Buying a product from a BSA sponsor is like being held hostage in their propriatry file formats. If you want to be freed, the ransom is the migration cost.
Just like on the seas near Somalia, governments step in to cut off the pirates from this hostage practice. By demanding and dictating open file formats, the software license cost pirates are left empty-handed, and society prospers without the pirates' license and support fees.
Paying more than 20% for software assurance or support for a product that's not upgraded or improved is like paying to a neighborhood gang for 'protection', or indeed piracy.
- by hello_kittyhawk April 15, 2009 12:06 AM PDT
- T
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(35 Comments)he irony is that some so-called piracy from Somalia is actually nothing of the sort. The seas in question have been terribly overfished by westerners for decades, and huge amounts of deadly toxic wastes from as far as Europe are dumped there with devastating results.
Somalia has no effective government, and thus no Coast Guard, so eventually people there have ttied to take matters into their own hands - indeed, there are *also* real pirates due to the lawlessness consequent on no governing forces - yet the efforts towards self-protection have been totally hidden from public view by the shameful negligence of the media.
Perhaps there are parallels in regard to some of the issues of software piracy as well. I leave it to the more thoughtful and aware to spin this out further for yourselves ...