New anti-Piracy tool aims to geo-locate software pirates

by Steve Ragan - Jun 12 2009, 16:20

V.i. Labs, software protection and business intelligence vendor, has upgraded its flagship anti-Piracy platform 'CodeArmor Intelligence' to include geo-location. The update will show businesses who is pirating their Intellectual Property (IP), and where in the world they are. The aim is to turn pirates into sales leads.

New anti-Piracy tool aims to geo-locate software pirates (IMG: V.i. Labs)

“Piracy is a huge issue with software vendors today. It’s due to the emerging market growth, the demand for the software globally, high Internet bandwidth, and expertise in reverse engineering. Some estimated peg this problem to be a $40 billion dollar problem,” said Victor DeMarines, Vice President of Products for V.i. Labs. This is why the company created CodeArmor Intelligence. It converts the “piracy problem into a new source of business leads and intelligence. It essentially gives software vendors the ability to track and recover lost revenue due to piracy,” DeMarines said.Pirates-to-profits jokes aside, the new tracking technology is interesting to say the least. Actually, to be honest, V.i. Labs has created something cool. This is what you would call innovative, even if you want to question the reasoning or whether or not it would actually work.The improvements to CodeArmor Intelligence work by taking advantage of Salesforce.com’s cloud offering Force.com to create a vendor piracy dashboard. From there, vendors can identify who is pirating their software and, by using Google Maps, locate them no matter where they are. Vendors, whose entire business model is developing software, have a right to know who pirates it and to also protect their IPs -- there is no one who lives in the real world that would argue against that. Theft is theft no matter how you spin the issue. However, to some, the issue is not protecting IP, the issue is making things up, such as the cost of piracy to the software industry, and squeezing money out of businesses who in all reality failed to understand complex licensing agreements. The problem is that most of those who lobby against pirates, such as the BSA (Business Software Alliance), tend to make things look worse than they really are. Earlier last month, the BSA and IDC released a report that said software piracy and illegal distribution hit a record high in 2008, resulting in losses of over $9 billion USD (the report also claimed that 20 percent of all software piracy is carried out in the U.S.). The BSA has been slammed for false numbers in the past. The largest issue many have taken with the reported figures is that the BSA equates every copy of a pirated program to a lost sale. This simply cannot be the case. Moreover, they are starting to move in the direction of including available pirated software, even if it isn’t in use but just available online, as a lost sale. In 2006, shortly after another BSA report on piracy was making rounds in the press, the New York Times had a great quote from IDC. John Gantz, director of research for IDC, told the New York Times that: "perhaps one of 10 unauthorized copies might be a lost sale. In developing nations, he explained, many users cannot afford software imported from the West. Instead of describing the $29 billion number as sales lost to piracy, he said, 'I would have preferred to call it the retail value of pirated software.'"This year, it was actually the BSA itself that admitted the numbers were skewed."I concede that, in this model, we express the value of pirated software in terms of retail value of what's being displaced. We assume 100 percent of the software would be replaced and we calculate the retail value of that," BSA VP of communications Dale Curtis told Ars Technica in an interview just after the release of the BSA’s 2009 numbers. "I don't know how much will be replaced or not. A lot of it will be replaced."In the same interview with Ars Technica, Curtis pointed out that anyone who focuses on exact numbers is missing the point. "We're not measuring this like speed of light or the size of a baseball field," he said. "The underlying problem remains the same."How then, if the BSA is not going to release accurate figures and numbers, can it honestly expect anyone to take piracy seriously? How can any business or business owner be expected to care about software piracy when the figures and reports they read are exaggerations or, in the case of Canada, simply made up? According to the 2009 report from the BSA, piracy in Canada declined from 33 to 32 percent. However, those numbers, after some research from Michael Geist, were discovered to be nothing more than a guess.Piracy is a serious problem, V.i. Labs creates software that helps protect a company’s IP, so when it comes to anti-Piracy movements, V.i. Labs is not the bad guy. Again, this is because a company has a right to protect what it has created -- and, quite simply, piracy is theft. However, fear-driven reports from lobbyist groups that use jumped up figures do nothing to help a business looking to make up for software losses. Given that most of the money the BSA collects on fines and penalties when it goes after a company that uses pirated software rarely goes to the vendor that created it, it's a no-win situation. V.i. Labs might be on to something with its technology, but only its customers will know if the geo-tracking really works. To learn more about V.i. Labs, check out its official Web site.

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Dale Curtis, Business Software AllianceJun 12th, 2009 - 22:05:47

Steve – In one paragraph you say software vendors have a right to protect their IP, and then you devote seven paragraphs to criticizing the only study that attempts to estimate the scope of the software piracy problem. BSA has always been open and transparent about the methodology of the BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study (www.bsa.org/globalstudy). There is no way to measure software piracy with scientific precision, and BSA does not present its figures as such.

Briefly put, IDC bases its PC software piracy rates and loss estimates on a model that draws upon many well-established, authoritative data sets. The output of the model is an estimate of the amount of software pirated, expressed in terms of piracy rates (how much software installed is not paid for) and revenue losses (the retail value of the legitimate software being displaced).

Of course we acknowledge that not every piece of pirated software will be replaced immediately with legitimate software if the pirated stuff is taken away. However, over the years, IDC has established a very strong correlation between the piracy rate and software sales in country after country. The lower the piracy rate, the higher the legitimate sales. If our critics were right, there would be little or no increase in software sales as piracy rates fell; but that is demonstrably not the case.

Thus our estimates of software piracy in Canada and all 110 countries in the study are not a “guess.” They are the best estimates available, based on a robust methodology and solid data from the world’s leading experts on the computer software and hardware market.

Anti-piracy efforts are important not only for protecting software developers; piracy also spreads security risks, undermines local IT sales and service firms, gives users an unfair advantage in competition, and reduces government tax revenues. That’s why BSA and its members work hard at informing businesses of all sizes about the many risks of unlicensed software, as well as the benefits of software asset management (SAM). Because education by itself is insufficient to stop copyright infringement, BSA also investigates reports of piracy from concerned individuals. When the allegations appear valid, we reach out to the companies involved and ask them to cooperate with us. If the companies come into compliance, that translates into revenue for our member companies. If not, the fines collected by BSA are re-invested in further education and enforcement programs.

I hope this helps set the record straight.

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Dear DaleJun 14th, 2009 - 03:03:51

I don't care how you spin your mental trash. No matter how you do it, it is and will always be mere gobbledygook. Get a job, Dale, a real job. Do something useful for society, humanity, rather than being a scum sucking leech.

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Jeezus H. Keeriste, Dale, you say:Jun 14th, 2009 - 03:15:43

'piracy also spreads security risks, undermines local IT sales and service firms, gives users an unfair advantage in competition, and reduces government tax revenues. '

Why don't you also say it is un-amerikan, rots your teeth, causes you to go blind and grow hair on your palms. It leads to socialism, which is a gateway to communism and ultimately to Islam. My gods, the Brothers Grimm couldn't come up with a bigger, better fairy tale than you just did. Does it come naturally, or did you take courses in lying and obfuscation?

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Dale saysJun 14th, 2009 - 03:23:42

'BSA has always been open and transparent about the methodology of the BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study'
Outright bullsh*t.

'IDC bases its PC software piracy rates and loss estimates on a model that draws upon many well-established, authoritative data sets.'
We just smoke a big fat doobie and these data sets are the best we could dream up.

'Thus our estimates of software piracy in Canada and all 110 countries in the study are not a “guess.” '
Like bloody h*ll they aren't. They're a drug addicts pipe dream. An estimate is a guess, you illiterate moron. Also to further show your illiteracy; 'Because education by itself is insufficient...'
You NEVER start off a sentence with 'because.' Get an education, do your own research, and then tell us why. Moron.

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