BSA lies its way through “Global Piracy Study”

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The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has published the latest edition of its "Global Piracy Study". Here it claims that proprietary software makers have lost US$ 1.8 bn due to piracy in the UK alone last year.

This is bunk, and they know it, as The Register notes:

It’s hard to say how many instances of pirated software represent
actual lost sales at full retail price. The distinction between the
"retail value of pirated software" and "sales lost to piracy" is not
addressed in the BSA’s survey. This point is worth noting because the
BSA uses headline figures on software piracy in the course of its
lobbying efforts.

Of course figures like this make good headlines, but don’t they believe over at the BSA that the consistent use of faulty methodology may harm their credibility?

But then, there never was much to be harmed in the first place, was there.

Comic relief: Laughing Yogi

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With all the somber stuff I blog about, something funny seems to be in order. BoingBoing pointed me to this video of a Yogi teaching a laughing lesson. 

Absolutely infectious. 

Africa: Bandwidth at US$ 1800 per gig

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One important factor contributing to the much-lamented "digital divide"  – in this case, between poor and rich countries – is the cost of bandwidth.

How enormous the differences are becomes palpable when comparing what people have to pay for one gigabyte of data transfer. In the US, it’s roughly 20 dollars. In Africa, on average, it’s 90 (!) times that – 1800 US$.

This is what spiegel.de reports – unfortunately without naming much of a source, so consider the figures with caution.
 

UK gov wants to force key disclosure

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Reality can’t wait to catch up with me. When yesterday I blogged about Bruce Schneier’s explanations why privacy is a human right, little did I know that the Powers That Be were spoiling for a fight on the issue as I was typing.

As The Register reports, the UK government wants to bring into force a provision that has been lying around since 2000, which would let authorities force someone to disclose their encryption key or face up to five years behind bars. The rationale? You guessed it: Terrorism.

You and I will remain guilty until proven innocent.

Schneier: Privacy is a human right

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What do you have to hide? When it comes to privacy, that’s not the question, says Bruce Schneier in an excellent comment on Wired.

 

Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining
the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches
the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

On the background of a new surveillance scandal going public every week or so, Schneier deals sternly with those who all too readily give up individual freedoms for a false sense of security.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half
years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a
phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange
or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics,
or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken
out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has
changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us.
This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
And it’s our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal,
private lives.

(His column is one of very few remaining reasons to actually check by there every now and then.)

WIPO saves webcasting for later

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The latest round of WIPO negotiations on a broadcasting treaty, which took place at the start of May, ended somewhat inconclusively. As the US pet proposal of including "webcasting" monopoly powers in the treaty held up everything else, the negotiators agreed to schedule yet another preparatory meeting for September before deciding to hold a formal diplomatic conference, where the proposed treaty would be fine-tuned and adopted.

The controversial "webcasting" proposal was put on a separate negotiating track, for now. What this means is uncertain, as usual with WIPO. But for now, it probably is good news. Read more at EFF Deeplinks, where Gwen says:

Even if webcasting and simulcasting are out, the remaining
"traditional" broadcasting and cablecasting treaty is still bad news.
It will be detrimental for technology innovation. It includes
broadcaster technological protection measures that will require
technology mandate laws like the U.S. FCC Broadcast Flag regulation
over televisions, radios and possibly even personal computers. The
treaty could create the global legal framework for tech mandate laws
that rival the proposed U.S. broadcast and digital radio flag
mandates. As EFF, Intel Corp. and many others have noted, the
combination of DRM mandates with novel rights raises serious threats
to innovative entertainment technologies.

French Copyright Law: Summary

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As we non-French speakers are desperately trying to grab every morsel of information that comes out about the current state of the French copyright law, Jean-Baptiste Soufron comes to our rescue.

Here’s his summary in English, which he wrote so that he doesn’t have to answer tons of emails on this question. Thanks! 

Jamie Love: Cool, I’m a webcaster! [UPDATE]

Posted by gerloff on 0

This week at WIPO, delegates are negotiating the proposed Broadcast Treaty. This treaty has a "webcasting" option. With this option enabled, anyone making available a combination of sounds and images on the internet would receive a new kind of monopoly powers over that "webcast".

Richard Stallman has aptly called these "skunk odor powers": They stick to anything, they spread, and there’s no way to get them off.

Now, Jamie Love shows us how easy it is to become a webcaster. He has simply set up a pages with a few links to video files. The only additional trick is that he is calling himself a "broadcasting organisation" now.

Robin Gross of IPJustice is currently featured on IP-Watch with a longer text about the treaty and the negotiations.

UPDATE: There are people blogging the negotiations. They include Gwen Hinze of EFF and Thiru Balasubramaniam of CPTech. For summarised reporting, see the excellent-as-usual IP-Watch.
 

Pfizer sues Philippines over 200 pills

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Following a bid to lower the cost of medicine,  the Philippine government has run into trouble with pharma manufacturer Pfizer.

IPWatch has an article to give you all the gory details.

There’s a medication against high blood pressure. In the Philippines, it costs a lot; next door in Indonesia and Thailand, it’s available a lot more cheaply.

Since the patent is due to expire next year, the Philippine government has ordered some 200 pills of the stuff, so its drug regulators can look at it. This way, the med should get the go-ahead as soon as the patent has run out.

Pfizer, the company holding the patent, has now sued the government of the Philippines for violation of international patent regulations – although the product in question has never even been near a market in the country.

This is probably a bid to gain a few more months of monopoly profits in the Philippines, when the patent has run out, but the regulators are still working on the approval. Pfizer must need the money to pay their CEO, who just got a substantial wage hike.

And for good measure, there are rumors that Pfizer used their advertising leverage to spin newspaper coverage of the issue.

Old media reviews new media: Economist, + Forbes’n’Pharma

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Sorry for being silent for a week and a half. Vacation? I whish. In fact, I was working through the aftermath of the Yale A2K conference and preparing for my talk at GNU/Linuxtag on Saturday.

The good thing about travelling so much, though, is that sitting on airplanes with no power outlets in economy class gives you time to read. Last week, I actually sort of liked what I saw.

Two of the strongholds of economic liberalism ran extensive features on interesting subjects. The Economist carried a special report (login required) on "new media". This one quoted from a report by PriceWaterhouseCooper:

Successful media companies […] will become “marketplaces that
let consumers search, research, share and configure their media
experiences.” To be good, these exchanges need to combine “a
personalised media experience with a social context for participation.”
Instead of “exclusive ownership of content or distribution assets” (the
stuff of old media), the media marketplaces will compete in their
“knowledge of consumer activity”, which they will use both to interact
more intimately with consumers and to match them better to advertising
that is unobtrusive and helpful (itself a novelty), and thus lucrative.

It also has Terry Semel, Yahoo!’s boss (and former Time Warner fat cat) saying:

 “Until recently they were just being protective, keeping their arms
around their copyright,” says Mr Semel about the old industry that he
left behind. “The faster they start to pay attention to making stuff
for people like Yahoo!, the better for them.” They’ve been warned.

 And Forbes? They ran a feature about marketing in the pharmaceutical industry. The bottom line: If Big Pharma isn’t doing well – and will be faring worse in the future – it’s because they have hugely increased their marketing budget at the expense of research and development.

So don’t believe a single word when they come around crying for stricter patent monopolies so that they can continue to innovate. We, the public, shouldn’t keep paying the price for their deficient business strategies.