Criticism of BSA piracy reports on Bulgaria, other developing nations

Veni Markovski of the Internet Society of Bulgaria points to this blog entry on "how BSA data is manipluated for countries in transition, where software 'dealers' make profits about 300-400%." Snip from post:

Today, the BSA published a report about the so-called software piracy.

I say “so-called”, because of the interpretation of the data by the Bulgarian branch of BSA.

Here’s how the data should be read in historical order:

In 2004 BSA published another report. According to the data there, Bulgaria “had” $ 26 million of “pirated” software.

This year BSA Bulgaria uses new data by IDC to say that, “the Bulgarian IT-sector can double its volume from USD 300 M to USD 622 M till 2009, if the country can lower the software piracy with 10 %. ”

Now, how can decrease of $ 2.6 million per year lead to an increase of IT-sector with $ 322 M? That would have been funny, if it wasn’t sad.

It seems that either the data is fake - something of which there a number of articles published in the Bulgarian media, or it’s deliberately falsified.

Link to full text of post.