Mike Masnick of Techdirt demonstrates how the BSA's piracy stats mislead.
Masnick on BSA’s Piracy Stats
July 21, 2008
Share this post
3 Comments

Law Bytes
Episode 262: Zack Shapiro on the Claude AI Native Law Firm
byMichael Geist

March 16, 2026
Michael Geist
March 2, 2026
Michael Geist
February 23, 2026
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Michael Geist on Substack
Recent Posts
When Writing About Antisemitism Proves the Point: What the Replies Reveal
Acting on Antisemitism: If This Was Always Possible, Why Didn’t It Happen Sooner?
Setting Canada’s AI Policy Priorities: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 262: Zack Shapiro on the Claude AI Native Law Firm
The Online Streaming Act in Jeopardy: U.S. Takes Aim at the CUSMA Cultural Exemption With Threats of Bill C-11 Retaliation

License
There’s that license to use term again. What a spin the BSA spit’s out. The study pretty much includes open source software in their ‘piracy’ statistics. So, a company, say Sony, uses OpenSSL in their SecuROM technology is hurting business.
They are appropriately named; The B.S. Alliance.
Three strikes
One of the linked articles shows one of the dangers of the “three strikes” proposal regarding piracy complaints…
Not surprising
I work in the software industry and I have long found the BSA’s supposed statistics to be a bunch of BS.
This is the same group that used to bulk send letters to small businesses threatening to sue if they didn’t license their installed software WITHOUT even knowing what was installed.