Software piracy figures exaggerated by a factor of ten

THERE WAS A TIME when inventions were generally held to be for the good of mankind. I mean, the bloke who invented the wheel didn't patent it. Nor did the woman who discovered that her new mix of fat-headed grass could be made into nice tasty bread.

Now, of course, you invent things to gain commercial advantage and charge the punters over the odds for stuff that is easy to make - once you know how.

Like Microsoft makes software. It has a few voles beavering away in subterranean bunkers churning out lines of code like there's no tomorrow. It costs a few bob to keep them in pizza and cola but most of the software-maker's outlay will be spent on marketing and advertising its wares.

And thus it squirrels away billions of dollars each year and its bosses become the richest folk on the planet.

Elsewhere, like, say, in India, there are thousands of variety of rice. These have developed over the millennia and hybrid Indian rices are today grown all over the world.

Of course, the ancient Indians weren't as capricious as today's food conglomerates, who get hold of these rice varieties and fiddle about with them a bit before slapping some patent or other on them and selling them back to the Indians. One of the advantages of this is that they can get the rice to only last one season. That way the rice growers have to come back each year for more.

Of course, if you copy Windows and pass it on without giving Microsoft a cut, you're a pirate. Like if you listen to the Chilli Peppers album online before it comes out you're a pirate. No doubt rice growers in India will end up being branded pirates once all their rice varieties have been modified to bits.

Apropos of all this, the Business Software Alliance reckons that 27 percent of PC software used in the UK is illegal. It calls on the UK Government to combat the "culture of piracy" that exists here.

It arrives at this figure with a bit of guesswork, estimating how many software packages are used in the UK and then subtracting the value of those sold.

Extrapolating this on a global scale the BSA reckons "Worldwide losses from software piracy amounted to $34 billion in 2005".

It says the highest piracy rates are found in Zimbabwe and Vietnam, where it reckons 90 percent of the software in use is illegitimate.

A quick squint at the CIA World Fact Book shows that the unemployment rate in Zimbabwe is 80 percent, as is the estimated proportion of the population living below the poverty line. Other estimates put the average income in the country at around $500 per annum. A further quick squint through the windows of PC World in the UK shows that a copy of Windows Home costs £89 - $168. We'll let you do the math[s].

While we're at it, the BSA cobbles together its figures in a manner not wholly approved of by its hired researcher IDC.

IDC says it used "proprietary statistics" for software and hardware shipments, conducted 5,600 surveys and enlisted IDC analysts in 38 countries to confirm software piracy trends.

IDC, however, is on record as suggesting that as few as one in 10 unauthorized copies might be a lost sale. A spokesman for the firm said that in developing nations, many users cannot afford imported software from the West. "I would have preferred to call it the retail value of pirated software," he said of last year's BSA report.

So, for the BSA to describe its $34 billion figure as "losses" that the software industry has sustained is simply what we like to call cobblers. In fact, we urge the UK government to disregard the BSA's findings.

Indeed, we suggest it help push for the fines levied against Microsoft for artificially keeping the price of its Windows "operating system" high, by operating and illegally maintaining a monopoly, to be set a such a level that it has to buy everyone in Zimbabwe a PC.

And the BSA can chip too, for scaremongering and wasting our time. µ