Wrong data

Referring to a recent interview with Ina Kileva, executive director of Bulgarian anti-piracy outfit Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), published by The Sofia Echo, Markovski says the the discussion has been "going on for a very long time and I think it is completely wrong".

"A few days ago [Bulgarian daily] 24 Chassa published another letter from the music or movie industry, again blaming the internet for the fact that they can’t sell their music or movies," he says.

"This discussion is based on the assumption that the users are the bad guys who are downloading music for free off the internet, or watching movies.

They say that if we somehow manage to punish these people, instead of downloading movies and music off the internet, they will start buying. But that is a very wrong assumption, because if users are not allowed to download, they will just not download and they will not buy. They are not going to pay for the music or for the movies. If they wanted to pay, they would not be watching the latest movie on a 12-inch screen in not so good quality, they would just go to one of the big movie theatres and watch it for 10 leva," Markovski says.

According to Markovski, the data quoted by anti-piracy organisations is incorrect. As an example, he quotes the data on software piracy in Bulgaria.

"There is no software piracy in Bulgaria, and that is very easy to prove even with the data that the Business Software Alliance (BSA) provides," Markovski says.

Quoting BSA data, Markovski says that in 2000, between 80 and 90 per cent of software in Bulgaria was alleged to be pirated, with an estimated value of 10 million dollars.

"If that is the whole amount of software in Bulgaria, that is a very low number, but that is their data, so let’s assume their data is correct," Markovski comments.

"In 2002, the Bulgarian government signed a deal worth 13.6 million dollars to buy software from Microsoft. Now, if you have 10 million worth of illegal software and you buy 13 million, the next year you should have a plus. What the BSA did though, was that they increased the amount of illegal software to 20 million dollars. Why? Who knows. But probably they couldn’t say ‘we screwed up last year, so we have to fix the numbers this year.’ In 2008, then minister Nikolai Vassilev signed a deal for 54 million euro, again for software only from Microsoft. I bet you the BSA will still claim there is illegal software in Bulgaria," Markovski says.

"Obviously, something is wrong with their numbers. And if it is something that is so simple to be caught, then how can you trust their numbers at all?" he says.

The BSA is an international organisation, whose members include some of the world’s largest computer software and hardware producers. The organisation’s activities include fighting software piracy and lobbying for tougher laws on anti-piracy. According to Markovski, these companies, and therefore the BSA itself, have an interest to give governments reasons to increase spending on software, and one of the tools used in this is the Special 301 Report, published annually by the office of the US Trade Representative. The report lists countries that are thought to lack sufficient intellectual property rights protection and enforcement.

"Obviously, if Bulgaria is on the 301 list, the minister will say ‘we are in this report and we have to get out, so we have to buy software.’ This is a vicious circle, there is no exit," Markovski says, "unless you have a government that is committed to change the perception that everyone in this country is a criminal and a pirate. What you need to have is someone at a governmental level who will say ‘your data is not correct and until you fix it, we are not going to take it as reliable’. They can send a letter to the US Trade Representative and explain that if they continue to include Bulgaria in the 301 list based on data that comes from producers’ organisations and the BSA, Bulgaria will make this a public case. There is nothing worse for a US official than to find out that they have been misled by a lobbyist organisation and publicly embarrassed," he says.

Solutions
As chief executive of one of Bulgaria’s then largest ISPs, Bol.bg, Markovski says he has made proposals to intellectual property rights holders and their representatives to solve the piracy dispute. One of these proposals was a flat-rate fee, to be paid to rights holders, for every subscriber of the ISP.

"We proposed that we would pay two leva, or one euro, per user a month, no matter whether they download movies and music or not. I think we had around 10 000 users at that time, so that would have been roughly 120 000 euro a year from only one ISP," Markovski says.

"This would have been a very good working model, so all the other ISPs would have joined. And today, with close to 45 per cent of Bulgarians online, or about three million people, they could have had 36 million euro a year, money they can never make by selling CDs," he says.

According to Markovski, the offer was declined. "Obviously they prefer to get a small amount of money from their foreign sponsors, like other similar associations from all over the world, mainly the US of course."

With a friend who at the time worked as a top-level officer for the Bulgarian police, Markovski says he once discussed the software piracy issue. According to his police-friend, Markovski said, it was very simple; as long as there is the perception that there is piracy in Bulgaria, the associations get funding from their international bodies to fight the piracy. "If there is no piracy, they get no funding," Markovski sums up the friend’s conclusion.

"When there was ‘piracy’ in Bulgaria, and I always put quotation marks around the word piracy because I believe there is no piracy in Bulgaria, the workshops that the BSA and others organised in Bulgaria were held in good resorts around the country. For several days they would put together teams of investigators, judges and prosecutors, and they would explain to them how to fight cybercrime and copyright-related crimes. When Bulgaria was dropped off the Special 301 Report, suddenly the same workshop would not take place outside Sofia and there was only water to drink. Otherwise, I’ve been at such workshops where there were big dinner tables with lots of alcohol, you name it," Markovski says.

"In other words," he says, "the fight against piracy is in the interest of those who fight it. They have no interest to solve it. If they wanted to solve it, they could have accepted our offer eight years ago. By now, they could have had 200 million for those years, roughly."