Post Tagged with: "piracy"

Piracy Haven Label Case of Rhetoric Over Reality

Appeared in the Toronto Star on May 10, 2010 as Software Piracy Charges Against Canada Are Unfair In the wake of the Toronto Star reports exposing the activities of former MP Rahim Jaffer, lobbying has been the talk of Ottawa for the past month. The incident has had an immediate […]

May 10, 2010 — 1 comment — Columns Archive

U.S. Government Study: Counterfeiting and Piracy Data Unreliable

For several years, I have written about the lack of reliability of data on counterfeiting. The RCMP cited data without any factual basis, while other groups regularly made claims without support, such as reports from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and the Conference Board of Canada. Of course, this phenomenon was not limited to Canada. The US Patent and Trademark Office relied on the same data to claim 7 – 8 % of world trade is counterfeit, while a report from the first Global Congress on Counterfeiting, which led to ACTA, pointed to FBI data it said showed counterfeiting at US$200 – 250 billion per year.

This week a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concludes that estimates such as these are not reliable and cannot be substantiated to a data source. The U.S. GAO was required by Congress to try to quantify the impact of counterfeit and pirated goods. While concluding that counterfeiting exists and is a problem, the GAO could not find reliable data. Its review of commonly cited claims:

April 14, 2010 — 24 comments — News

BSA Admits Canadian Software Piracy Rates Estimated; Canada Viewed as Low Piracy Country

As part of the attempt to characterize Canada as a "piracy haven," the Business Software Alliance's annual Global Piracy Report plays a lead role. The Conference Board of Canada references the findings, as do their funders in their reports on the state of Canadian intellectual property laws (Chamber of Commerce, CACN). Moreover, the report always generates considerable media interest, with coverage this year in the Globe and Mail and Canwest papers. For example, the Globe cited the data directly in the Download Decade series stating that "about 32 per cent of the computer software in Canada is pirated, contributing to losses of $1.2-billion (U.S.) in 2008 alone, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance."

This year the BSA reported that Canada declined from 33 to 32 percent. Michael Murphy, chair of the BSA Canada Committee claimed that "despite the slight decline, Canada’s software piracy rate is nowhere near where it should be compared to other advanced economy countries. We stand a better chance of reducing it significantly with stronger copyright legislation that strikes the appropriate balance between the rights of consumers and copyright holders."

Yet what the BSA did not disclose is that the 2009 report on Canada were guesses since Canadian firms and users were not surveyed. While the study makes seemingly authoritative claims about the state of Canadian piracy, the reality is that IDC, which conducts the study for BSA, did not bother to survey in Canada. After learning that Sweden was also not surveyed, I asked the Canadian BSA media contact about the approach in Canada. They replied that Canada was not included in the survey portion of the study, explaining that:

May 27, 2009 — 24 comments — News

BSA’s Sweden Piracy Stats Entirely Estimated

Computer Sweden reports that the BSA's recent data on piracy in Sweden was entirely estimated. No Swedish companies, vendors, or computer users were apparently contacted as part of the study.

May 20, 2009 — 2 comments — News