Rumours were flying around back in January that the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the people who chase down illicit software users, had updated their global software piracy study – with help from research house IDC. Unfortunately, the BSA was hanging on to the findings and repeated requests over the following months with: “It`s under embargo.”

Some six months later the embargo appears to have been lifted quietly and the study made available for download. Almost simultaneously, a scathing report article entitled “BSA or just BS?” appeared in The Economist.

The magazine argues that, while the losses due to software copyright violations are large and serious, the crime is not as costly as the BSA wants us to believe. “The association`s figures rely on sample data that may not be representative, assumptions about the average amount of software on PCs and, for some countries, guesses rather than hard data.”