The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is concerned about how much piracy
goes on with students. They
performed a study that shows that Students are quite willing to pirate software
to save money for other finer purposes in life including peg parties, beer and
food. In a survey of 1000 college
and university students, only 24% consider it wrong to make unauthorised copies
of software while 93% agree that software developers deserve to be rewarded for
their efforts. 89% said that they
did not always pay for downloaded software which is copyrighted and not
free.
The BSA says that "Intellectual property theft is both wrong and illegal"
and this applies to students also.
They claim that if students are not educated about why software piracy is
wrong, they are likely to continue to pirate software later in life within their
business.
 The
ever-vigilant Business Software Alliance (BSA) has struck out against
immoral college students, saying it's concerned about the lack of respect
kiddies have for software.
The software industry trade group
commissioned a study that found students are quite willing to pirate
software. The collegians' main motivations for obtaining software
illegally are to save money and to get back at a "prosperous" industry.
"Only 24 percent of 1,000 college and university students surveyed
consider it wrong to make unauthorized copies of software," the BSA said.
"Yet, despite their attitudes toward piracy, 93 percent of students
surveyed agreed that "people who develop software deserve to be rewarded
for their efforts." However, 89 percent said they didn't always pay for
the copyrighted software they downloaded."
While the BSA appears
shocked by these results, many of you might not be. College students tend
to have this nasty habit of cutting costs wherever possible to save up for
the finer things in life like keg parties and food. They don't put ethics
and the moral high-ground too high on their list of priorities while at
school. But the BSA is concerned that this lack of concern for software
could stick with them in the long run.
"Intellectual property
theft is both wrong and illegal," BSA President Robert Holleyman said. "If
schools don't educate their students on this issue, many of these students
are likely to take their piracy ethic into the business world."
Armed with that logic, you might expect to see the streets filled with
LSD-crazed, binge-drunk adults having open-air orgies. But we all know
that this only happens in San Francisco, and that naughty children can
turn into fine adults.
The BSA, however, went on to put the screws
on the undergraduates. A second study, again commissioned by the BSA,
found that more than 105,000 people lost their jobs in 2002 as a result of
software piracy. U.S. piracy losses alone approached $2 billion in 2002.
It's unlikely that college students pocketing a copy of Office
here and there made a large contribution to this total, but that's not
really the point of the BSA's gripes. The heart of the matter goes back to
the BSA's concerns of breeding immorality in our children.
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Most students cannot afford the high prices
Microsoft and may others have on their software and even student licenses are
quite high. The same goes with
music CDs. While I was at college
nearly everyone had a PC with a CD recorder, but most got them very cheaply
second hand and there was no way anyone was going to fork out over several times
the cost of their PC to get a licensed copy of Windows, let alone Office or
other expensive software.
Source: The Register
